VOSS: Shared Leadership: Moving Beyond Virtuality and Distribution to Build Capacity in Virtual Organizations

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The question of shared leadership is growing more important as complex world issues increasingly require distributed collaboration. Organizational researchers lack an understanding of the multiple kinds of leadership roles that virtual teams rely on and of the optimal balance of these roles. Previous research has confounded virtuality and distribution or included only a few combinations of these characteristics. Systematically examining the combined effects of degree of virtuality and geographical distribution on emerging forms of leadership and outcomes, this research includes a lab study to understand leadership structure in virtual teams. It investigates how team cognitive processes and performance are affected by: (1) how leadership is shared or distributed among internal and external team members, (2) the degree of virtuality inherent in the tools used for collaboration (e.g. synchronicity, informational value), and (3) the degree of distribution among team members (e.g. fully distributed, partially distributed). Results will extend existing theory on shared leadership and team cognition to hybrid teams of virtual and face-to-face interactions to illuminate the relationship between leader behaviors and team outcomes.These findings will ultimately provide evidence-based guidelines for practitioners regarding the form(s) of leadership best suited for particular types of virtual teams and the corresponding processes required for effective performance. Additionally, findings will contribute to knowledge concerning how virtual team structure interacts with computer and communication support technology to impact team process and performance with potentially transformative results.