When and How Are Multiple Leaders Most Effective? It's Complex

摘要

Collectivistic approaches to leadership focus on the beneficial impact of various combinations of multileader units (Denis, Langley, & Sergi, 2012; Yammarino, Salas, Serban, Shirreffs, & Shuffler, 2012). These "we" approaches to "leadership in the plural" suggest that the mutual influence of multiple members within a unit should enable potential performance benefits because of increased cognitive and structural resources (Friedrich, Vessey, Schuelke, Ruark, & Mumford, 2009). Yammarino and colleagues provide a detailed overview and useful categorization resulting in an increased conceptual understanding of the varying approaches to collectivistic leadership; however, the extent to which leadership should be distributed and how it is enacted among members in light of situational boundary conditions remains relatively unclear (Yammarino et al., 2012). How should leadership be distributed among team members (e.g., should 25%, 50%, or 100% of the members engage in leadership functions)? Further, when should this influence process consist of overlapping roles or unique roles among members (e.g., should multiple members both engage in initiating structure and consideration or should one member engage in initiating structure and another member engage in consideration)? We address these challenging questions through focusing on how and when collectivistic leadership is effective by considering various forms of multileader units in conjunction with the situational context of complexity.