VOSS: Building Shared Leadership to Strengthen Virtual Team Effectiveness

随着复杂的世界问题越来越需要分布式协作，共享或分布式领导与虚拟团队效率之间的联系变得越来越重要。组织研究人员缺乏对分布式虚拟团队中团队成员之间影响力分布的原因和后果的理解。采用多学科的方法，本研究在社会技术范式下研究了共享领导，整合了共享领导，授权，群体过程和媒体选择理论的观点。本研究考察了虚拟团队中共享领导力的一系列前提和结果，结合了两项对照实验室研究和一项实地研究，以考察从实验室研究中获得的原则的普遍性。这三项研究系统地考察了沟通媒介、启动机制、团队过程和团队结构对团队有效性的综合影响。第一项研究操纵了介绍性会议沟通媒介和启动机制（如目标澄清）的使用，以确定它们对参与复杂决策模拟的团队成员之间共享领导力的影响。本研究追踪了模拟过程中团队过程和共享领导的发展，以及它们对团队知识共享、绩效和生存能力的影响。第二项实验室研究评估了指定领导者授权（相对于指令）领导在虚拟团队成员之间实现共享领导的程度，特别是在启动机制的背景下。第三个实地研究评估了分布式专业知识和地理分散程度对共享领导模式的影响，以评估完整组织虚拟团队中共享领导对团队有效性的影响。这些发现将有助于了解虚拟团队的领导、流程和结构如何与计算机和通信支持技术相互作用，从而影响团队绩效。组织越来越依赖于虚拟团队，这项研究的结果将对从事这些活动的科学家、工程师、管理人员、劳动力成员和学生产生广泛的影响。这个项目将为组织、管理和在虚拟团队中工作提供基于证据的指导。它将增强实践者对最适合特定类型的虚拟团队的领导形式以及有效绩效所需的相应流程和结构的理解。研究成果将纳入本科和研究生课程，并通过校友研讨会提供。此外，该项目将通过提供高质量的研究经验，直接为三名研究生和两名本科生的教育做出贡献。这项研究的结果可以为政策制定者和技术开发人员提供信息，他们可以塑造协作基础设施、激励机制和流程，从而实现更有效的虚拟团队，增强创新和竞争力。

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.