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

随着复杂的世界问题越来越需要分布式合作，共享领导的问题变得越来越重要。组织研究人员缺乏对虚拟团队所依赖的多种领导角色以及这些角色的最佳平衡的理解。以前的研究混淆了虚拟和分布，或者只包括了这些特征的几个组合。本研究系统地考察了虚拟程度和地理分布对新出现的领导形式和结果的综合影响，包括一项了解虚拟团队领导结构的实验室研究。它考察了团队认知过程和绩效如何受到以下因素的影响：(1)领导力如何在内部和外部团队成员之间分享或分配；(2)用于协作的工具所固有的虚拟程度(例如同步性、信息价值)；以及(3)团队成员之间的分配程度(例如完全分布和部分分布)。研究结果将现有的共享领导力和团队认知理论扩展到虚拟和面对面互动的混合团队，以阐明领导者行为与团队结果之间的关系。这些发现将最终为实践者提供循证指导，指导他们关于最适合特定类型虚拟团队的领导形式(S)以及有效绩效所需的相应过程。此外，研究结果将有助于了解虚拟团队结构如何与计算机和通信支持技术相互作用，以潜在的变革性结果影响团队过程和绩效。

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.