1.1. Research Topic Background
Recently, more research goes into understanding and implementing shared leadership. This is because the traditional “top-down” leadership approach is no longer effective. In today’s business and engineering environments, organizations strive for maximum efficacy and efficiency to remain competitive and outperform rivals. Organizations promote the growth of team environments to complete projects because it enables them to quickly adjust to industry requirements and demands. Sometimes, these organizations neglect choosing the optimal leadership model for success.
The shared leadership model is created to provide teams and organizations with benefits, including the ability to complete projects on time and make effective and logical decisions (Carson, Marrone, & Tesluk, 2007, p. 1217). Simultaneously, many organizations turn towards Six Sigma methodologies to develop innovative solutions and skills in knowledge workers and project managers. Since today’s projects are more complex and uncertain, traditional management techniques aren’t as adequate. Therefore, organizations lean towards Six Sigma to make teams more adaptive to change and flexible with dynamic requirements. Six Sigma makes it easier to distribute responsibility to teams, which helps them proactively respond to changing demands.
A review of Carson et al. (2007) indicates that little research addresses the shift to internally distributed forms of shared leadership. Some research demonstrates that scholars encourage shared leadership. For example, Gibbs (1954) was the first to argue that “leadership is probably best conceived as a group quality, as a set of functions which must be carried out by the group” (Carson et al., 2007, p. 1217). This concept is known as “distributed leadership.” Research also shows that “…when team members voluntarily and spontaneously offer their influence to others in support of shared goals, shared leadership can provide organizations with competitive advantage through increases in commitment, in the personal and organizational resources brought to bear on complex tasks, in openness to reciprocal influence from others, and in the sharing of information…” (Carson et al., 2007, p. 1218).
Koschzeck’s (2009) research has found that organizations utilizing shared influential acts perform better than those relying on a single individual. Thus, one can conclude that organizations perform more efficiently when utilizing shared leadership as opposed to single-individual leadership common in traditional teams. These thoughts and concepts challenge the conventional leadership view, however further review demonstrates that there lacks an abundance of empirical work on shared leadership.