VOSS: Building Shared Leadership to Strengthen Virtual Team Effectiveness

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The connection between shared or distributed leadership and virtual team effectiveness is growing more important as complex world issues increasingly require distributed collaboration. Organizational researchers lack an understanding of the causes and consequences of the distribution of influence across team members in distributed virtual teams. Taking a multidisciplinary approach, this research investigates shared leadership within the sociotechnical paradigm, integrating perspectives from shared leadership, empowerment, group process, and media choice theories. This research examines a set of antecedents and outcomes of shared leadership in virtual tams, combining a pair of controlled lab studies with a field study to look at generalizability of the principles learned from the lab studies. These three studies systematically examine the combined effects of communication medium, initiating mechanisms, group processes and structure on team effectiveness. The first study manipulates introductory meeting communication medium and the use of initiating mechanisms (such as goal clarification) to identify their impact on shared leadership among team members engaged in a sophisticated decision making simulation. This study traces the development of group processes and shared leadership over the course of the simulation and their impact on team knowledge sharing, performance, and viability. A second lab study evaluates the extent to which empowering (versus directive) leadership by an appointed leader enables shared leadership among virtual team members, particularly within the context of initiating mechanisms. A third field study assesses the influence of distributed expertise and extent of geographical dispersion on shared leadership patterns to evaluate the impact of shared leadership on team effectiveness among intact organizational virtual teams. These findings will contribute to knowledge concerning how virtual team leadership, processes and structure interact with computer and communication support technology to affect team performance. Organizations are increasingly relying upon virtual teams and the results of this research will have a broad impact on the scientists, engineers, managers, members of the workforce, and students engaged in these activities. This project will provide evidence-based guidelines for organizing, managing, and working in virtual teams. It will enhance practitioners' understanding of the form(s) of leadership best suited for particular types of virtual teams and the corresponding processes and structures required for effective performance. Research results will be integrated into undergraduate and graduate curriculum and made available through alumni workshops. In addition, the project will contribute directly to the education of three graduate students and two undergraduate students by providing a high quality research experience. The results of this research can inform the policy makers and technical developers who shape collaborative infrastructure, incentives, and processes enabling more effective virtual teams and enhancing innovation and competitiveness.