THE
EFFECTS OF VERTICAL LEADERSHIP, TEAM DEMOGRAPHICS, AND GROUP POTENCY UPON
SHARED LEADERSHIP EMERGENCE WITHIN TECHNICAL ORGANIZATIONS

by

Dennis
M. Cashman

MARC
MUCHNICK, Ph.D., Faculty Mentor
and Chair

JULIAN
WALLACE, Ph.D., Committee Member

ALLAN
COHEN, DBA., Committee Member

Kurt
Linberg, Ph.D., Dean, School of Business & Technology

A
Dissertation in Partial Fulfillment

Of
the Requirements for the Degree

Doctor
of Philosophy

Capella University

August
2008

© Dennis M. Cashman, 2008

Abstract

As leadership research has progressed, reports of
increasing levels of involvement and commitment by employees suggest the
evolution of an alternative form of collective leadership, known as shared
leadership.  Research to date has
been somewhat limited to the specific organizational conditions and structures
of self-managed teams and academic environments.  Unique to this research, the condition
in which shared leadership may emerge was targeted to more conventional,
leader-led teams within a high technology company.  This study confirms that shared
leadership develops in other team structures beyond self-managed teams.  Unlike past shared leadership research,
both variables of vertical transactional contingent reward and transformational
leadership have been found to be positively related to the development of
shared leadership.  Additionally,
the research validates the relationship among vertical leadership, group
potency, shared leadership, and team effectiveness.  Seeking to answer the recommendations of
past shared leadership researchers to better understand the effects of team
demographic variables upon shared leadership, the demographic variables of team
size, team maturity, member familiarity, member proximity, and team membership
load are studied.  Both
transactional contingent reward and transformational vertical leadership, as
well as team member familiarity, support the emergence of shared leadership.
Shared leadership, along with team member proximity, supports the development
of group potency.  Transformational
vertical leadership, shared leadership, team maturity and size support the
team’s self-assessment of team effectiveness.  The findings are significant in that new
insights into some of the common conditions in which shared leadership may
emerge have been reached.

Acknowledgments

I
would like to acknowledge the support of individuals that helped me through
this academic journey.  First, I
would like to thank the support of my committee, Marc Muchnick, Ph.D., Julian
Wallace, Ph.D., and Allan Cohen, DBA., for their encouragement throughout the challenges
of this dissertation research.

Second,
I would like to acknowledge Bill Lamberti and all the team leaders, who took
the time from their busy schedules, to encourage their teams to
participate.  The strength of this study
is in the data collected from technical teams involved in real work.  Without their help, the results of this
study would have been less credible and exciting.

Finally,
and above all, I would like to thank my wife, Linda, for her support and
encouragement throughout the joys and frustrations of this long academic road.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
iii

Table of
Contents                                                                                                                iv

List of
Tables                                                                                                                      vii

List of
Figures                                                                                                                       x

CHAPTER
1.  INTRODUCTION

Introduction
to the Problem                                                                                     1

Background
of the Study                                                                                         2

Statement
of the Problem                                                                                         4

Purpose
of the Study                                                                                                6

Research
Questions and Hypotheses                                                                        6

Rationale
and Theoretical Framework                                                                      7

Significance
of the Study                                                                                       11

Definitions                                                                                                              11

Assumptions
14

Limitations                                                                                                              15

Nature
of the Study                                                                                                16

Organization
of the Remainder of the Study                                                         17

CHAPTER
2. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

Introduction
to Shared Leadership                                                                         18

The
Need for Shared Leadership                                                                            18

Shared
Leadership Research                                                                                   36

Influential
Variables for Shared Leadership's Emergence                                      45

Summary                                                                                                                 55

CHAPTER
3. METHODOLOGY

Introduction                                                                                                            56

Research
Design                                                                                                     58

Sampling
Approach                                                                                                59

Instrumentation
and Measures                                                                                61

Data
Collection                                                                                                      81

Data
Display and Analysis                                                                                     85

CHAPTER 4. DATA
COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS

Data
Collection                                                                                                      91

Data
Analysis                                                                                                         92

Summary
133

CHAPTER
5.  RESULTS, CONCLUSIONS, AND
RECOMMENDATIONS

Introduction                                                                                                           137

Summary
of Findings                                                                                             139

Implications
for Theory                                                                                          149

Study
Implications                                                                                                 159

Assumptions
and Limitations                                                                                 160

Recommendations
for Future Research                                                                 163

Conclusion                                                                                                              165

REFERENCES                                                                                                                  167

APPENDIX A. TEAM
DEMOGRAPHIC/POTENCY QUESTIONNAIRE                 178

APPENDIX B.
DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS FOR SHARED TRANSFORMATIONAL

LEADERSHIP
(SLALL) – MEMBERS & TEAM LEADER RATING            179

APPENDIX C. DESCRIPTIVE
STATISTICS FOR VERTICAL TRANSFORMATIONAL

LEADERSHIP
(TFALL) – MEMBERS & TEAM LEADER RATING             180

APPENDIX D.  DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS FOR VERTICAL TRANSACTIONAL

LEADERSHIP
(TA-1)                                                                                          183

APPENDIX E.
DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS FOR GROUP POTENCY (POT) - MEMBERS &

TEAM
LEADER RATING                                                                                    186

List of Tables

Table 1. Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire- Sample
Transformational Items by

Factor                                                                                                                          67

Table 2. Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire- Sample
Transactional Items by Factor
68

Table 3. Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire- Sample
Passive/Avoidant Behavior

Items
by Factor
69

Table 4. Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire- Sample
Outcomes of Leadership Items      69

Table 5. Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire for Teams-
Sample Transformational

Items
by Factor                                                                                                           71

Table 6. Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire for Teams-
Sample Transactional Items

by
Factor
71

Table 7. Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire for Teams-
Sample Passive/Avoidant

Behavior
Items by Factor
72

Table 8. Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire- Sample
Outcomes of Leadership Items      72

Table 9. Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire for Teams
(Research Version) Sample Items

by
Factor
74

Table 10. Group potency Questionnaire                                                                                 76

Table 11. Data Analysis – Statistical Test by
Hypothesis                                                      90

Table 12.
Intraclass Correlation Coefficients – Shared Leadership and Team Potency         96-98

Table 13.
ANOVA for Shared Transformational Leadership                                                99

Table 14.
ANOVA for Vertical Transformational Leadership                                               101

Table 15.
ANOVA for Vertical Transactional Contingent Reward Leadership                    102

Table 16.
ANOVA for Group Potency                                                                                  104

List of Tables

Table 17.
Descriptive Statistics for Vertical, Shared Leadership, and Group Potency          105

Table 18. Correlations
Among Vertical, Shared Leadership, and Group Potency                 106

Table 19. Multiple Regression Analysis –
Vertical Leadership and Group Potency’s

Effect
Upon Shared Leadership                                                                                 107

Table 20. Regression Analysis Model Summary- Shared
Leadership                                    107

Table 21. Regression Analysis ANOVA- Shared
Leadership                                                108

Table 22. Multiple Regression Analysis – All
Variables’ Effect upon Group Potency          110

Table 23. Regression Analysis Model Summary- Group
Potency                                          110

Table 24. Regression Analysis ANOVA- Group Potency                                                      111

Table
25. Pearson Correlations for All MLQ Vertical Leadership Factors and

Shared
Leadership                                                                                                      113

Table 26. MLQ Factors (Descending Order) – Positive
to Negative Correlations                 114

Table 27.
Regression Analysis of All Independent Variables with Dependent Variable of

Transformational
Shared Leadership                                                                          116

Table 28. Regression Analysis Model Summary- All
Independent Variables with Shared

Leadership                                                                                                                  117

Table 29. ANOVA- All Independent Variables with
Shared Leadership                             117

Table 30. Correlations of All Variables                                                                                  119

Table 31.
Team Leader and Members’ Self-Rating of Team Effectiveness –
Correlations  121

Table 32.
Team Effectiveness – Regression Variables Entered                                              122

Table 33.
Team Effectiveness – Regression Model Summary                                                123

List of Tables

Table 34.
Team Effectiveness – ANOVA
124

Table 35.
Summary of Results – Hypotheses Supported                                                 134-135

Table 36.
Summary of Results – Additional Significant Relationships                                 136

List of Figures

Figure 1. Directional Path of Hypothesized Variables                                                           88

Figure 2. Path Model - SLALL as Sole Dependent
Variable                                                 126

Figure
3. Path Model - POT as Sole Dependent Variable                                                      127

Figure 4. Path Model - SLALL as a Dependent and
Mediating Variable to POT                 128

Figure 5. Path Model – FAM and PROX Added as
Independent Variables to POT                       129

Figure 6. Path Model – FAM and PROX Added as
Independent Variables to SLALL     129

Figure 7. Path Model – Best Fit Model                                                                                  131

Figure 8. Path Model – Best-Fit Model Considering
Leader and Member

Assessment
of Team Effectiveness                                                                            132

CHAPTER 1.  INTRODUCTION

Introduction
to the Problem

Leading
organizations in the current age of change is complex and challenging (Child
& McGrath, 2001).  The ability
of leaders to influence employees to embrace change beyond their natural
resistance (Katz & Kahn, 1966) is a credible measure of effective leadership
(Bridges, 2003).  The effective deployment
of leadership skills, roles, and abilities is critical for leading
organizations through strategic change (Nadler & Tushman, 1990; McLagan,
2002).  Among the effective
leadership characteristics for managing change and complexity are the acts of involving
others, building commitment, empowering others, and building empowered teams (Wellins,
1991; Graetz, 2000; Shield, Thorpe, & Nelson,
2002).  The progression of leadership
research suggests that increasing levels of involvement and commitment by
employees has the potential for evolving into an alternative form of leadership.  One such form may be shared leadership (Bradford
& Cohen, 1998).

Leadership's
response to change and complexity without the involvement of others may suffer
from the problems of blame, passivity, fear, stress, anxiety, low morale, and
loss of performance (Bradford & Cohen, 1998; Yukl, 2002; Applebaum &
Gandell, 2003; Bridges, 2003).  Bradford
and Cohen (1998) suggest that as leaders take more control and responsibility
for results of the unit, the more passive the team becomes.  Ultimately, the enabling of others to act
(Kouzes & Posner, 1987) is the core of leadership effectiveness.  This enablement is also the core of shared
leadership effectiveness (Pearce & Conger, 2004).

In shared leadership, both
the vertical leader and the team members may demonstrate acts of
leadership (Parker, 1990; Rost, 1995; Pearce, 1997; Yukl, 2002; Cox, Pearce
& Perry, 2004).  Therefore,
leadership may be shared between the team and the traditional leader
(Cleveland, 2002; Pearce & Manz, 2005).  A highly educated workforce and pressures
imposed by the global economy may create the optimal conditions for organizations
to develop this alternative form of leadership.  The value of shared leadership is the
assistance it offers to leaders and teams facing organizational complexity.

One other
alternative form of leadership is shared, co-leadership.  This form of leadership is one of two
common mental constructs of shared leadership found in the literature.  This construct records the dynamics of
two individuals sharing vertical leadership responsibilities of a group (Heenan
& Bennis, 1999; O'Toole, Galbraith, & Lawler III,
2002).  Another construct is the
shared, collective leadership possessed by the whole team (Parker, 1990; Rost,
1995; Pearce, 1997; Cleveland, 2002; Yukl, 2002; Cox, Pearce & Perry, 2004;
Pearce & Manz, 2005).  Within
this discussion, all further references to shared leadership define the latter,
team-based form of shared leadership.

Whereas
shared leadership's existence has been validated and measured within
self-managed teams or empowered change management teams (Pearce, 1997), shared
leadership has only been proposed within new product development teams and
empowered sales teams (Perry, Pearce, & Sims, 1999; Cox, Pearce &
Perry, 2004).  The study of shared
leadership within traditional, non-self managing teams is limited.  Additionally, shared leadership research
within high-tech organizations does not exist.

Background
of the Study

Leading
organizations through the complexity of change requires effective vertical
leadership (Nadler & Tushman, 1990; Child & McGrath, 2001; McLagan,
2002).
Leaders who lead change most effectively influence employees
(Katz & Kahn, 1966; Bridges, 2003) and build commitment through involvement
and empowerment (Wellins, 1991; Graetz, 2000; Shield, Thorpe,
& Nelson, 2002).  These acts of
leadership effectiveness have the potential for developing shared leadership.

Shared
leadership validates and supports the role of vertical leadership as a
necessary entity (Bradford & Cohen, 1998), whereas truly empowered or
self-managed teams gradually wean themselves from the traditional roles of team
leaders (Wellins, 1991).  Throughout
the early to mid-90s and at the time of Pearce's (1997) ground breaking shared
leadership research, self-managed teams were common (Wellins, 1991; Wellins
& George, 1993).  Self-managed
teams have achieved some success as viable organizational structures, however,
the expressed concerns for these organizational units have been significant and
numerous (Steinburg & Rissler, 1991; Carr, 1992; Dew, 1995; Wageman, 1997;
Hut & Molleman, 1998; Caramanica, Ferris & Little, 2001).  As a result, teams with more traditional
vertical leadership are now more common than the self-managed, fully empowered
teams that had been the primary focus of shared leadership.

Pearce (1997)
found that transformational vertical leadership supports the development of
shared leadership among team members within fully empowered, self-managed
change management teams.  Adding to
the common transactional and transformational leadership archetypes, Pearce
(1997) also measured aversive, directive, and empowering leadership styles.  To control the number of variables
within his statistical tests, Pearce organized directive, aversive, and
transactional leadership behaviors into the meta-dimensions of "vertical
controlling" and "shared controlling" leadership.  Transactional leadership has been shown
to be a credible leadership style (Burns, 1978; Bass, 1985).  Combining both types of transactional
leadership styles, contingent reward and management by exception-active (Bass,
1985), with directive and aversive leadership may have created an unintentional
barrier to determining the value of the transactional style's distinct role in
developing shared leadership.

Pearce and Sims
(2002) suggested that future research might find that mature teams possessing
both technical and leadership skills among team members display more shared
leadership.  Teams within high-tech
organizations should possess these technical skills.  Other factors affecting the emergence of
shared leadership might be "team member familiarity, team member
proximity, and team maturity" (Pearce & Sims, 2002, p. 187).  Team size (Cox, Pearce & Perry,
2004) and the stress of team membership load (Wood, 2004) may also be
significant team demographic variables.

Another variable related to vertical and shared leadership is group
potency (Pearce, 1997).   Group
potency, a collective construct, is the collective belief within a team that it
can be effective (Guzzo, et al, 1993; Bligh, Pearce, & Kohles,
2006).  Vertical leadership affects
team performance through the enhancement of group potency (Lester, Meglino,
& Korsgaard, 2002).  Group
potency has been widely studied and shown to have positive effects upon the
group outcomes of satisfaction, effort, and performance (Guzzo, et al, 1993)
and team effectiveness (Pearce, Gallagher, & Ensley, 2002).

The
environmental complexities associated with managing change within
high–tech organizations may enable the requisite vertical leadership
style, team demographics, and sense of group potency necessary for the development
of shared leadership within these traditionally structured teams.

Statement of the Problem

A
large part of leadership effectiveness is the ability to lead others through
change, manage complexity, build commitment, empower others, enable employees
to act, and develop highly effective teams (Kouzes & Posner, 1987; Nadler
& Tushman, 1990; Wellins, 1991; Graetz, 2000; Child & McGrath, 2001;
McLagan, 2002; Shield, Thorpe, & Nelson, 2002).  While leaders develop increasing levels
of involvement and commitment, alternate forms of leadership, such as shared
leadership, may emerge (Bradford & Cohen, 1998).  This collective form of leadership is
shared among the leader and the team (Parker, 1990; Rost, 1995; Pearce, 1997;
Cleveland, 2002; Yukl, 2002; Cox, Pearce & Perry, 2004; Pearce & Manz,
2005).  The value of shared
leadership is the assistance it offers to leaders and teams facing
organizational complexity.  Whereas
this extant value has been found within self-managed teams (Pearce, 1997), the
study of shared leadership within traditional, non-self managing teams is
limited.  There has been no such
shared leadership research within high-tech organizations.

Shared
leadership validates and allows for the necessary role of vertical leadership (Bradford
& Cohen, 1998), whereas the empowered or self-managed team's general
direction is weaning itself from the team leader (Wellins, 1991).  Pearce (1997) has demonstrated that
teams led by transformational vertical leadership support the development of
shared leadership within self-managed change management teams.  Though this team structure was once
common (Wellins, 1991; Wellins & George, 1993), the overall success of this
initiative is questionable (Steinburg & Rissler, 1991; Carr, 1992; Dew,
1995; Wageman, 1997; Hut & Molleman, 1998; Caramanica, Ferris & Little,
2001).  Shared leadership may be
found within traditionally led, mature teams, possessing both technical and
leadership skills among its team members, as may be evident within high-tech
organizations (Pearce & Sims, 2002).  Pearce's (1997) categorization of catalyzing
leadership characteristics measured transformational leadership (Bass, 1985).  Pearce's (1997) inclusion of
transactional, contingent reward leadership style into a controlling leadership
construct may have missed the ability to measure this and other important
transactional leadership variables' (Burns, 1978; Bass, 1985) role in
developing shared leadership.  Team
demographic variables may influence the emergence of shared leadership.  The variables of team member
familiarity, team member proximity, team maturity, team size, and team
membership load (Pearce & Sims, 2002; Cox, Pearce & Perry, 2004; Wood,
2004) have been proposed and have yet to be studied and measured.  Group potency is positively related to satisfaction,
effort, and performance (Guzzo, et al, 1993; Lester, Meglino, & Korsgaard,
2002), team effectiveness (Pearce, Gallagher, & Ensley (2002), and vertical
and shared leadership (Pearce, 1997).
Additional research of the relationships among potency, vertical, and
shared leadership would contribute to the body of knowledge of leadership and
teams.

Purpose of the Study

The
purpose of this study is to determine the relationship between transformational
as well as transactional vertical leadership styles with the development of
shared leadership.  It advances an
understanding of the relationships between team demographic variables of team
size, maturity, proximity, familiarity, and team membership load and the
development of shared leadership.
It further seeks to understand the relationship between vertical and
shared leadership with group potency.
This research focuses exclusively on the emergence of shared leadership
within traditional teams and high-tech organizations, neither of which has been
involved in shared leadership research.

Research Questions and Hypotheses

The following research questions and hypotheses will guide
this study:

Research
Question 1. To what extent is transformational vertical leadership style
related to the emergence of shared leadership within a high-tech team?

Hypotheses
1.  There is a statistically
significant positive relationship between transformational vertical leadership
with the development of team members' shared leadership.

Research
Question 2. To what extent is transactional vertical leadership style related
to the emergence of shared leadership within a high-tech team?

Hypotheses
2.  There is a statistically
significant positive relationship between transactional contingent reward vertical
leadership with the development of team members' shared leadership.

Research
Question 3. To what extent do team demographics of team size, maturity,
proximity, familiarity, and team membership load influence the development of
shared leadership within high-tech teams?

Hypotheses
3a.  There is a statistically
significant positive relationship between the team demographic variables of
team maturity, familiarity, and proximity with the development of shared
leadership.

Hypotheses
3b.  There is a statistically
significant negative relationship between the team demographic variable of team
size and membership load with the development of shared leadership.

Research
Question 4. To what extent are vertical and shared leadership related to group potency
within high-tech teams?

Hypothesis
4a:  There is a statistically
significant positive relationship between transformational vertical leadership
with group potency.

Hypothesis
4b:  There is a statistically
significant positive relationship between transactional contingent reward
vertical leadership with group potency.

Hypothesis
4c:  There is a statistically
significant positive relationship between shared leadership with group potency.

Rationale & Theoretical Framework

The
perspective of Bradford and Cohen's (1998) shared leadership, where hierarchy
and the vertical leader's role are not eliminated, supports the rationale that some
characteristics of both transactional and transformational leadership are valid
and necessary forms displayed by both the vertical leader and the team.  Both transactional and transformational
styles of leadership have been shown to predict high-performance (Burns, 1978;
Bass, 1985), with transactional leadership, alone, being insufficient (Avolio &
Bass, 2004).  Linkages between transactional and transformational forms
of vertical leadership with shared leadership have been suggested (Pearce
& Sims, 2002; Cox, Pearce & Perry, 2004).  This research seeks to build upon
Pearce's (1997) work by identifying the distinct
roles each leadership archetypes play in the development of shared leadership.  Additionally, the team
demographic variables of team maturity (Tuckman, 1965; Gersick, 1988; Stoner
& Hartmann, 1993; Pearce, 1997; Pearce & Sims, 2002; Avolio,
Sivasubramaniam, Murry, Jung, & Garger, 2003; Cox, et al., 2004), team
member-to-member proximity (Perry, Peace, and Sims , 1999; Childs &
McGrath, 2001; Pearce & Sims, 2002; Pooley, 2005), and team
member-to-member familiarity (Goodman & Leyden, 1991; Watson, et al, 1991) may
positively influence the development of shared leadership.  Other team demographic variables of team
size (Campion, et al, 1993; Pearce & Sims, 2002; Cox, et al.; Perry, 2004)
and team membership load (McGrath, 1991) may negatively influence the
development of shared leadership.  Transformational
and transactional - contingent reward vertical leadership may positively
correlate with group potency, whereas transactional -
management-by-exception-active vertical leadership may negatively correlate
with group potency (Pearce, 1997). Group potency, in turn, may positively
correlate with management and team member perception of team effectiveness
(Guzzo, et al, 1993; Hecht, Allen, Klammer, & Kelly, 2002; Lester, Meglino,
& Korsgaard, 2002; Bandura & Locke, 2003).

Significance of the Study

Beyond
the overall research interest for leadership and teams, there are five significant
contributing factors driving this research.  First, the research seeks to understand
whether shared leadership emerges within conventional leader-led teams.  This would confirm that shared
leadership develops in other team structures beyond self-managed teams (Pearce,
1997; Cox, Pearce, & Perry, 2004).  Cox, et al. (2004) suggest that there are
two sources of leadership influence in teams.  One is the vertical leader, either
appointed or emergent, and the other is the shared leadership demonstrated by
the team itself.  Wherever
leadership is found, it needs to attend to three levels of organization: the
technical level, commonly associated with production; the managerial level,
responsible for managing task and processes within the organization; and the
institutional level, which manages boundaries between the organization and the
environment (Thompson, 1967).  Unlike the empowered or self-directed
team initiative (Wellins, 1991), where the team's goal is to wean itself from
the traditional roles of the team leader, shared leadership validates the
necessary role of vertical leadership to lead (Bradford & Cohen, 1998) at
these organizational levels (Thompson, 1967).  Shared leadership opens the possibility
that the role of leadership in moving today's complex organizations forward may
be shared between the vertical leader and the team (Parker, 1990; Rost, 1995;
Pearce, 1997; Bradford & Cohen, 1998; Yukl, 2002).

Second,
this shared leadership research extends to a new organizational application
that has not been previously studied: technical organizations.  Cox, Pearce, and Perry (2004) suggest
that shared leadership research extend to a variety of organizational
sectors.  Pearce (1997) found
evidence of shared leadership within self-managed, change management
teams.  In the public sector, shared
leadership has also been identified and studied within public administration
workers (Choi, 2006).  It has been
proposed to exist within empowered sales teams (Perry, Pearce, & Sims,
1999), and new product development teams (Cox, et al., 2004).  Therefore, it is reasonable to propose
that a team led by effective vertical leadership style, working
interdependently and facing complex challenges, typical of technical
organizations, would display shared leadership.  Shared leadership should be present in
some knowledge intensive teams (Pearce & Manz, 2005) and therefore found
within high-tech organizations.

Third,
the variables of vertical transactional and transformational leadership are
kept separate and distinct to assess their unique impact upon the development
of shared leadership.  Other
research has clustered vertical transactional leadership measures with aversive
and directive ones (Pearce, 1997).
Managers' transactional leadership actions have been shown to positively
affect job satisfaction (Levin, 1992).
Satisfaction is related to task significance, autonomy, support, and
high competence of job knowledge and skill (DeLoach & Monroe, 2004), which
are logically present when shared leadership exists.  Transactional leadership, specifically
those behaviors associated with the variables defined as contingent reward (Avolio
& Bass, 2004), may be positively associated with the development of shared
leadership.

Fourth,
the research seeks to validate the relationship among vertical leadership, group
potency, and shared leadership.
This relationship has been previously studied in self-managed change
management teams (Pearce, 1997).  Group
potency's relationship with other team variables of job satisfaction and
effectiveness suggest its importance as an indirect effectiveness measure
(Guzzo, et al, 1993; Hecht, Allen, Klammer, & Kelly, 2002; Lester, Meglino,
& Korsgaard, 2002; Pearce, Gallagher, & Ensley, 2002; Bandura &
Locke, 2003).

Fifth,
the research seeks to answer the recommendations of Perry, Pearce, and Sims
(1999) and Cox, Pearce, and Perry (2004) for furthering the study of the
effects of team demographic variables upon shared leadership.  Among the suggested list of demographic
variables are team size, team maturity, member familiarity, member proximity,
and team membership load.

This
research is a natural extension of the past shared leadership research to
common teams with traditional vertical leadership within technical
organizations.  Its further
significance is its contribution to the body of knowledge of team demographics'
effect upon shared leadership.   Finally, this research is significant in
advancing the knowledge necessary for developing shared leadership and overall
team effectiveness.

Definitions

The
following terms are defined for the purposes of this study:

Transactional Vertical Leadership

The
transactional leadership (Bass, 1985) process is a power-based reciprocal
exchange between leaders and followers.
The transactional leader "clarifies what the associates need to do
for a reward" and is an "essential component of the full range of
effective leadership" (Avolio & Bass, 2004, p. 21).  Transactional
leadership, associated with behaviors of constructive and corrective
transactions, is measured along the factors of contingent reward and active
management-by-exception.  Thamhain
(2004) describes effective vertical team leadership as defining work process
and team structure, developing communication channels, properly staffing and
organizing the team, and creating proper reward systems.  These are consistent with transactional
leadership actions (Bass, 1985).
Transactional leadership balances transformational vertical leadership
in the most effective leaders (Bass, 1985; Avolio & Bass, 2004).  This need for balance provides the
rationale for incorporating transactional vertical leadership within this
research.

Transformational Vertical Leadership

The
concept of transformational leadership was described by Burns (1978) as the
process of raising awareness for the importance of achieving outcomes in
developing the motivation that transcended self-interest.  Ultimately, the transformational leader
develops others to reach a higher potential.  Bass (1985) identified five factors of
transformational leadership: idealized influence behaviors, idealized influence
attributes, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and
individualized consideration.
Transformational leadership, augmenting transactional leadership,
develops others (Avolio & Bass, 2004).
It does so, not through merely empowering others, but through developing
the capability to determine one's own course of action.  Avolio and Bass (2004) were careful to
clarify that transformational leadership does not replace transactional
leadership.  Both styles of
leadership are necessary to be effective (Bass & Avolio, 2004).  Examples of transformative (Bass, 1985)
and considerate actions are to stimulate enthusiasm, excitement, and
professional interests; ensure senior management support; build commitment;
manage conflict and problems; and foster a culture of continuous support and
improvement (Thamhain, 2004).  The
need for developing capability within a team, not merely empowering them,
provides the rationale for including the transformational form of vertical
leadership within this research.

To
measure vertical leadership effectiveness, Avolio and Bass (2004) validated the
Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ).  Measured factors are categorized within
three major styles of leadership.
Transformational leadership is measured via idealized attributes and
behaviors, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individual
consideration.

Transactional
leadership, associated with behaviors of constructive and corrective
transactions, is measured along the factors of contingent reward and active
management-by-exception. Transactional leadership, though necessary, is
insufficient to sustain leadership effectiveness (Avolio & Bass,
2004).  Passive/avoidant behavior,
which is undesirable, but often present in ineffective leadership, is measured
along the factors of passive management-by-exception and laissez-faire.

Shared Leadership

There
have been numerous references to shared leadership.  One construct of shared leadership
describes the rotation and distribution of leadership responsibilities within a
team (Parker, 1990).  Shared leadership
research flourished in the 1990s, shortly after the appearance of self-managed
teams in organizations.
Self-managed teams represent, by definition, an organizational structure
requiring the emergence of shared leadership.  Shared leadership is leadership
possessed by the collective team membership within a team (Cox, Pearce, &
Perry, 2004).  Shared leadership
occurs when team
members share equal responsibility for ensuring that all tasks necessary to
accomplish a goal are completed (Pearce & Conger, 2003).  Shared leadership, by definition, does
not require a self-managed team.
While a team may have a formal leader, leadership often shifts among
team members depending upon the circumstances, the needs, skills, and maturity
of the team (Pearce & Conger, 2003).

Group potency

Group
potency, a collective construct, is the collective belief within a team that it
can be effective (Guzzo, et al, 1993; de Jong, de Ruyter, & Wetzels, 2005; Bligh,
Pearce, & Kohles, 2006).  Group
potency is a collective and a generalized construct, assessing the overall
team's belief that it can be effective, whereas, self-efficacy is an
individual's task-specific belief about one's own competence (de Jong, de
Ruyter, & Wetzels, 2005).  The
group potency construct has been validated by Guzzo, et al (1993), and its
eight-item assessment has been widely used in group potency research.  Group potency is related to vertical and
shared leadership (Pearce, 1997).

Assumptions

From a research perspective, leadership may be either a dependent or
independent variable.  Vertical
leadership is hypothesized, and therefore assumed the independent
variable.  Leaders and team members influence one another (Rost,
1995; Yukl, 2002).  Since leadership
is not unidirectional, it may be difficult to determine the degree of vertical
leadership influence upon the emergence of shared leadership.  There is a complex interplay between
vertical and shared leadership (Yukl, 2002).  Though the direction of influence may be
somewhat ambiguous, other shared leadership studies have inferred a causal
relationship from vertical to shared leadership.  For the purposes of this research and
similar to other shared leadership research and proposed models, vertical
leadership is hypothesized to be the independent variable (Pearce, 1997; Cox,
Pearce & Perry, 2004; Choi, 2006).

Along
with these variables, the team's work must be interdependent and sufficiently
complex to develop a sense of shared leadership.  Teams operating within high technology
organizations generally meet the characteristics of interdependence and
complexity, and yet these conditions of interdependence and complexity are only
logically connected to the nature of the high-tech organization.  It is therefore assumed that due to the
complexity and interdependence of the environment within high-tech
organizations, a higher proportion of teams may develop shared leadership.

Limitations

Past measurement
of shared leadership has targeted the team, not the individual, perhaps due to
the unmanageable complexity of quantifying individuals' behavior.  It is important to note, however, that
consensus for the construct and resultant measurement of shared leadership has
not been reached (Pearce, 1997).
Recent validation studies for the assessment of shared leadership exist
for the Team Multifactor Leadership Quotient (TMLQ) (Avolio, Sivasubramaniam,
Murry, Jung, & Garger, 2003).
This most recent assessment of shared leadership offers a five-construct
model and though limited, elements of this instrument have been validated.   Though consensus has not been reached for
this instrument as the benchmark for measuring shared leadership, it does
provide a limited, but credible way to describe and measure shared leadership
at the time of this research.

In
addition to vertical leadership style, other independent variables may
influence the dependent variables of shared leadership.  Some of the suggested variables are team
structure, boundaries, leadership support, and level of empowerment (Cox,
Pearce & Perry, 2004).  Cox,
Pearce, and Perry also proposed that the team characteristics of members'
ability, proximity (geographical collocation), size, diversity, and maturity
are viable independent variables affecting shared leadership.  The selection of independent variables
for this research is challenging and its scope must be limited.   In doing so, some important
variables may be ignored.  Intact
teams and their vertical leaders will be surveyed within a high-technology organization.  As many teams as possible will be asked
to participate in the study and so the sample will be limited by the number of
available teams willing to participate within one organization.

Nature of the Study

This
study determines the relationship between transformational as well as
transactional vertical leadership styles with the development of shared
leadership.  It advances an
understanding of the relationships between team demographic variables of team
size, maturity, proximity, familiarity, and team membership load and the
development of shared leadership.
It further seeks to understand the relationship between vertical and
shared leadership with group potency.
This research focuses exclusively on the emergence of shared leadership
within traditional teams and high-tech organizations, neither of which has been
a previous target of shared leadership research.

This
quantitative research samples the vertical transactional and transformational
leadership style, team demographics, group potency, and shared leadership
within common teams with traditional vertical leadership roles.  As such, the population of conventional,
intact teams within one high-tech Corporation is targeted through convenience
sampling of teams available to participate in the research.  This population sample has not been previously
involved in shared leadership research.
The methodological approach is positivistic and quantified.  The construct of shared leadership most
recently researched by Pearce (1997) is partially used and is influenced by Bradford and Cohen's (1998) assertion that vertical
leadership's role and hierarchy is not eliminated.  Vertical leadership is measured via the Multifactor
Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) (Bass & Avolio, 1996) and is essentially similar
to the Team Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (TMLQ) (Avolio,
Sivasubramaniam, Murry, Jung, & Garger, 2003) which is used to measure
shared leadership.  The group
potency construct, validated by Guzzo, et al (1993), is used in this study as a
measure of group potency.  The team
demographic variables of team size, team maturity, member familiarity, member
proximity, and team membership load are simple constructs with simple scale
metrics.  Quantitative data analysis should prove or negate the stated hypotheses
through applicable multivariate analysis and correlation tests.

Organization of the Remainder of the Study

This
study consists of five chapters.
Chapter I has introduced the problem, the background, problem statement,
purpose, research questions, rationale and theoretical framework, significance
of the study, definitions, assumptions, limitations, and the nature of the
study. It has introduced the concept of shared leadership and suggested viable
leadership and team demographic variables predictive of its emergence.  Chapter II provides a review of the
related literature, including the organizational context supporting the
development and need for shared leadership as well as the prior research within
employee involvement and empowerment, the complexities of self-managed teams, leadership
style, team demographics, potency, and shared leadership.  Chapter III provides the research
methodology and design.  It
discusses the management dilemma, research questions, and hypotheses that
formulate a quantitative design of the research of shared leadership within
high-tech organizations.  Chapter
III also presents sampling procedures, survey questionnaires, and survey
distribution methods.  Chapter IV
provides the actual collected data and analysis and presents the results and
findings of the study.    Chapter V presents the implications
and conclusions of the study based upon the research results and findings.  This chapter revisits the research
questions and notes the theoretical and practical implications of shared
leadership within high-tech organizations.
Chapter V also suggests a future direction for the study of shared
leadership.

CHAPTER 2.
LITERATURE REVIEW

Introduction to Shared Leadership

The contemporary
research of shared leadership can be traced through many developmental pathways
over the past several decades.  To
understand the concept, efficacy, and benefits of shared leadership, it is
necessary to review the literature supportive of its emergence in teams.

This review seeks
to validate some of the relevant factors, dynamics, and variables affecting the
development of shared leadership.  In doing so, it relates many of the
conditions necessary for the development of most healthy teams and suggests
some of the relevant variables related to the emergence of shared
leadership.  Vertical leadership,
empowerment, and empowered teams are discussed as they may have a nascent
relationship with shared leadership.
Employee involvement, empowerment, and self-managed teams are reviewed
at some length because of the evolutionary nature of this initiative leading to
the development of shared leadership.
Finally, the shared leadership research is summarized and leads to the
rationale for the focus of this study.

The Need for Shared Leadership

Managing in the Age of Change

Leadership's
ability to lead change and the employees' ability to support the change are
important to any change effort.
Some of the significant challenges during change have been due to the organizations'
natural tendency to buffer change.
"The fact is that organizations have built-in protective devices to
maintain stability and they are notoriously difficult to change" (Katz
& Kahn, 1966, p.26).  Leadership's
response to change challenges may inadvertently create resistance to the
change.  Some of these efforts, when
taken through the lens of heroic leadership, "contribute to a mutually
reinforcing system that causes and perpetuates the leadership trap of control
impassivity" (Bradford & Cohen, 1998, p.8).  The more control and responsibility for
results of the unit the leader takes, the more passive the team may become,
resulting in blame, dysfunction, and loss of performance (Bradford & Cohen,
1998).

Whether the
leader uses instrumental or charismatic leadership or a combination of both to
lead the organization through convergent or strategic change, there are
effective change leadership roles and approaches (Nadler & Tushman,
1990).  Effective change leaders
provide guidance through clear goals and feedback, create planning structures
that optimally provide flexibility, invest in required resources, and create
frequent wins (McLagan, 2002).  Some
of the key dimensions of change leadership are challenging the status quo,
inspiring a shared vision, personal communication, involving others to build
commitment, and "enabling others to act by energizing, empowering,
building teams, providing tangible support with appropriate resources, and
putting in place the appropriate systems and structures"  (Graetz, 2000, p. 550).  It is the enabling, not delegating, of
others to act (Kouzes & Posner, 1987) that is the core of shared leadership
(Pearce & Conger, 2004).

Change may
produce stress within organizations (Bridges, 2003).  Effective responses to change require
behavioral and attitudinal change transitions that must be understood and
managed (Bridges).  This requires leaders' understanding
that change, and the resistance to it, is a healthy dynamic within
organizations (DeJager, 2001).  Management
must not view resistance to change as something that must be controlled
(DeJager).  Initial resistance to any
change initiative at the beginning stages should be expected (Bridges).  Dealing effectively with the human side
of organizational change will increase the probability of a successful change
effort and this requires leadership support.

One example of
the lack of change leadership is the common experience of mergers and
acquisitions. Mergers fail at the alarming rate of 60 to 80% due to cultural
and leadership communication issues.
This results in stress, anxiety, uncertainty, fear, turnover, and low
morale (Applebaum & Gandell, 2003).  Leadership behavior
and role modeling is important for successful change, including the development
of shared leadership within change management teams (Pearce, 1997).  A significant challenge for managing
change is the preservation of psychological contracts.  A way to build these contracts is to
involve employees in real and meaningful ways to develop and implement
strategic change (Shield, Thorpe, & Nelson, 2002).  By doing so, effective change leaders
develop transactional and transformational shared leadership within their
change management teams (Pearce).
Given that organizational change is constant (Nadler & Tushman,
1990), supporting the development of shared leadership in teams may prevent
leadership overload.  Environmental
complexity and the constant state of change may overwhelm even the most
transformational and empowering leaders (Pearce & Manz, 2005).  With an educated workforce and the
global economy pressuring organizations to reduce costs and improve
efficiencies, the empowering benefits of shared leadership may be required
(Pearce & Manz).

Organizational
Environment

The
organizational environment influences the emergence of shared leadership.  One important variable is the manner in
which leadership is enacted.
Leadership, either vertical or shared, must perform three sets of
activities competently and efficiently: "identifying and disseminating the
collective aims of an organization, regulating the flow of resources into and
out the organization, identifying and governing duties and rights as well as
functions and roles of members of the organization" (Child & McGrath,
2001, p. 1136).  To perform these
activities well, three levels of the organization must dynamically
interact:  The technical level,
commonly associated with production; the managerial level, responsible for
managing task and processes within the organization; and the institutional
level, which manages boundaries between the organization and the environment (Thompson,
1967).  Shared leadership does not
aim to replace the role of leader and yet, it opens the possibility that this
role, in today's complex organizations may be shared among its team members (Bradford
& Cohen, 1998).

The
environment, in which an organization competes, affects the organization and
its members.  With increasing
environmental complexity, more specialization and coordination are necessary to
effectively respond to organizational challenges (Lawrence & Lorsch,
1967).  Both vertical and shared
leadership have the capability to manage this coordination within and across
team boundaries.  The trend toward
an information-based economy requires organizations to cope with four core
issues: interdependence, disembodiment, velocity, and power (Child &
McGrath, 2001).  Organizations need
to shift their focus from "buffering against uncertainty to responding to
a strategic focus on structure and process design, a reemphasis on the social
and interpersonal, and the reemergence of issues of legitimacy" (Child
& McGrath, 2001, p.1135).  Flatter,
team-based organizations are a response to this shifting focus.

Organizations
are naturally comprised of interdepartmental systems.  A division of labor within these
departments creates uncertainty and leadership derives its power from coping
with this uncertainty (Hickson, et al, 1971).  Organizations have often taken a
traditional approach in managing complexity and change posed by the
environment.  "The role of
hierarchy attempts to respond to changes in the environment and maintain
stability by adjusting organizational structure" (Katz & Kahn, 1966,
p.26).  In its attempt to manage the
complexity, organizations often mistakenly turn toward a stronger hierarchical
approach to manage its complex environment.  This traditional organizational response
might support the development of a more controlling style of vertical
leadership (Burns, 1978; Bass, 1985), but not shared leadership.

According
to Child and McGrath (2001),
"power and accountability for its use, which in the traditional
bureaucracy was presumed to be placed in the control of top executives by their
principles, becomes a far more complex matter in organizations that have
multiple stakeholders and are not organized hierarchically" (p.
1140).

Cleveland
(2002) proposed that the future for organizations is the "uncentralization
path" (p. 28).  In the
post-postmodern era, complex activities will be uncentralized, governed by
rules adopted via participation, with some authority ensuring the shared rules
are followed until such time they are internalized and accepted.  Then, they will be perpetually learned "at
a parent's knee or at school or by adult experience and informal (but
effective) peer pressure" (Cleveland, 2002, p. 29).  This participatory, team-based approach
manages the challenges of complexity. This approach might be served by a
combination of vertical and shared leadership (Bradford & Cohen, 1998).  Shared leadership requires employee
involvement and yet, employee involvement will not emerge without an organizational
culture that fosters it through leadership support.

Employee Involvement

As
organizations face complex changes within their competitive environments,
organizational culture and vertical leadership encourage the involvement of
employees (Robbins, 2003).  Employee
involvement is a “participative process that uses the entire capacity of
employees and is designed to encourage increased commitment to the
organization's success” (Robbins, 2003, p.194).  Evidence exists for employee involvement
programs created specifically to capitalize upon this form of involvement.  Some examples of these early programs
included participative management, work councils, and quality improvement
initiatives (Robbins).

The
most important and positive influence to employees is the assurance that their
manager is fully competent and capable (Garvey, 2004).  Vertical leadership is necessary to
foster shared leadership.  The most
important factor in employee involvement and recognition programs are those
with active management support and involvement (Garvey).  The influence of top management and
their commitment to employee involvement programs has a strong correlation for
such programs’ future success (Rodgers, Hunter, & Rogers, 1993).

The
advantages of employee involvement to organizations become evident when
employees fully participate in the decisions of management and are encouraged
to provide solutions to problems.
Real organizational benefits such as improvement to employee health, and
its reduction in absenteeism is one such gain reported by Gonzalez (2005).  Within a large waste management company,
employee involvement and training programs reduced accidents by 60% (Woods,
2005).  Employee involvement
programs result in tangible benefits of increased productivity, safety,
employee health, and quality.
Further, the best employee involvement programs are those viewed by
employees and management as successful programs for the organization.  The most successful employee involvement
programs are also manager-involvement programs (Spath, 2004).  An important and positive influence upon
employee involvement is the assurance that management is fully competent and
capable (Corporate Leadership Council, 1999).  Competent and capable vertical
leadership, therefore, is fundamental for the development of shared leadership
(Parker, 1990).

Empowerment

Empowerment
plays an important role in helping organizations face their complex challenges
(Fulton, 2003).

We are caught in this funny kind of
paradox of power and powerlessness.
We see how complex the systems are and how daunting the challenges are
at this moment in history, and so every person individually feels small and
unable to do anything.  I think that
going forward, a lot will depend on the leaders who will emerge and where they
emerge from.  Much will depend on
the degree to which those leaders can inspire people to see how much power we
actually do possess, both individually and collectively.  (Fulton, 2003, p.48)

The
use of teams can be a credible and effective method to empower employees
(Orsburn, Moran, Musselwhite, & Zenger, 1990).  The gain to organizations becomes
evident when employees fully participate in the decisions of management and are
encouraged to provide solutions to problems.

Empowerment
is neither easy nor automatic.
Supervisors may resist empowerment and cling to autocratic behaviors
(Dew, 1995).  They may resist
empowerment because they fear a loss of influence and viable career path and
doubt the practicality of empowered teams (Dew).  Suggesting that it may be a role
interpretation and skill problem, Dew suggests that practitioners and senior
management could support the transition to empowerment by providing strategies
for team leadership development.
Further, implementing a change process towards empowerment requires the
readiness and involvement of team leaders in the planning process.  To sustain the change from supervision to
team leadership, influential coaches and mentors must help facilitate the
transition from autocratic to democratic leadership (Dew, 1995).  Active management support and active
involvement in employee involvement programs is critical (Garvey, 2004).  ”You can't simply approach a
person or group and expect them to follow you, regardless of the power
resources you possess.  You must
build meaningful connections” (Preston,
2004, p.52).

Empowering
leadership, active involvement, and leadership support of employee empowerment
are critical to the success of teams (Dew, 1995; Garvey, 2004; Preston,
2004).  The style and influence of
leadership, as well as the empowerment of employees, are important factors in
the development of teams and their overall effectiveness (Dew, 1995).  A relationship between team
effectiveness and shared leadership exists (Pearce, 1997).  An understanding of the variables necessary
for developing team effectiveness may support a better appreciation for some of
the important variables for developing shared leadership.

Team Effectiveness

There are also
many descriptions, yet little consensus, for what comprises team
effectiveness.  Guzzo and
Dixon (1996) note that team effectiveness is a broad performance-related term
and may be indicated by outputs of quantity, quality, speed, customer
satisfaction, team member consequences, or enhancement of team capability.  For a team to be
effective, the team structure should be necessary and appropriate.  Teams may not be the best
solution and should not be formed to address every problem (Bragg, 1999).  Alternatives to teams, such as the use
of work groups or short-term task forces, need to be considered (Carr,
1992).  Within these groups, one
would not expect to find significant levels of shared leadership, due to the
group's greater dependency on the leader.
Goals must be large and exciting enough so that only a team, not an
individual, can best solve the problem.
Reinforcing the need for goals and criteria for successful teams,
Kezborn (1999) cited some important
basics.  Teams must develop a sense
of interdependency, common decision-making and problem solving approaches, team
accountability, and a collective purpose for a common goal.  Shared leadership requires the team
to have clear goals that are aligned with the organization.  Successful teams' goals are directed and
focused by management, while supporting the company's strategy and values.  Ultimately, the team's actions must help
achieve business results (Fitz-Enz, 1997).
Effective teams, however, are generally not passive.  Such teams create their own identity,
are accountable for their actions, and have leadership sponsors who understand
their unique needs (Frohman, 1995).

Effective teams
must accomplish the task results at hand as represented by their collective
purpose and goals.  Effective teams
balance both task accomplishment and the process of learning that result in
personal, team, and individual development (Clutterbuck, 2003).  There are important team behavioral responses
that signal and support effectiveness.
Some of these are team members' ability to get along,
listen to one another, set priorities, feel recognized, and reach agreement
(Allerton, 1996).  These behaviors
are regulated by team norms.

Team
norms are strengthened when they are viewed as important by the majority
of the team's members.  Some of the
behaviors that are reinforced are those that “ensure group survival,
facilitate task accomplishment, contribute to group morale, or express the
group’s central values” (Feldman, 1984, p.52).  Members who conform to group norms, as
opposed to violating them, experience more positive emotions (Christensen,
Rothgerber, Wood, & Matz, 2004).
Norms reinforce members' positive
behavior.  Additionally, reinforcement
of such norms is ensured by “statements of supervisors, critical events
in the group’s history, primacy, or carry-over behaviors from past
situations” (Feldman, 1984, p.52).

The understanding
and influence of norms is critical to the success of teams.  However, norm conformity can result in
deleterious consequences (Moorehead, Ference, & Neck, 1991).  In a well-known analysis of groupthink
and the Challenger space shuttle tragedy, an out-group was the critical source
of information that could have diverted the unproductive, tragic
alternative.  Conformance to norms
may clearly be productive or unproductive.
Managers and employees in team environments need to better understand
the conditions in which norms are established, and the effect on productivity.

Aligning
work with the organization, defining roles, holding people accountable, as well
as building a shared understanding, are additional requirements for effective
teams (Nador, 2001).  The right mix
of functional knowledge, skills, and personalities on the team must be
identified and selected at the time of team formation (Nador).  There are additional, common team
development issues that may arise such as lack of role clarity, vision, and
direction from management, poor business planning, and reluctance to discuss
team issues (Higgs, 1996).  Some of
the frustrations felt by employees may arise from confusion about the reasons
for teams, lacking the proper skills to operate as a team, and having unclear
goals and roles (Higgs).  As the
team becomes more empowered, team leaders may no longer understand their newly
evolved role, nor have the skills necessary to enact it.  Another issue might be lack of detailed
planning, management support, and the follow-up support necessary to ensure
success in a team-based empowerment initiative.

Team members need
to feel a sense of pride and purpose, information, recognition, challenge, and
self-development.  This is influenced
by attentive, supportive, and results-oriented managers (Rabby, 2001).  Management should give team members the
space, time, and support to deliberate and work through conflict (Stoner &
Hartmann, 1993).  An important role
of management should be to provide information and perspectives, which are
normally unavailable to team members (Stoner & Hartmann, 1993).

A
palpable move toward the development of empowerment came through the empowered
team movement.  As experience with
empowered teams progressed, there were many factors that emerged, which were
seen as helpful to the overall effort to empower employees (Yeatts &
Barnes, 1996).  Experience with
team-based organizations highlights important and unique challenges and
suggests that the implementation of empowered teams is more complex than most
managers realized (Yeatts & Barnes, 1996).  A review of the successes and
implementation failures of empowered, self-managed teams provides an important
background for the emergence of shared leadership.

The Complexity of Empowered Teams

The
most advanced form of teams, known as empowered or self-managed teams, were
extensively reported by Wellins (1991).
Within this discussion, the terms 'empowered teams' and 'self-managed
teams' are used interchangeably.  An
understanding of empowerment and the challenges of team development are
necessary in implementing and building empowered teams.  Shared leadership and empowered change
management teams have been linked (Pearce, 1997).  Based upon leadership style, shared
leadership has the potential for development within other types of teams as
well.  There are numerous vertical leadership
styles associated with empowered teams.  Among these are aversive, directive,
transactional, transformational, and empowering, though not all support shared
leadership (Pearce, 1997; Pearce & Sims, 2002).

Empowered
teams have members who manage themselves, assign jobs, plan and schedule work,
make production or service related decisions, and take action on problems
(Kirkman & Rosen, 2000).
Empowered teams have been widely written about since the early 1990's,
however, their origin was earlier.
Empowered teams date back to the 1950's in the coalmines of England.  In the mines, employees worked interchangeably
and helped each other by trading jobs responsibilities.  Empowered teams have the advantages of
managing worker burnout and employee control within an extremely harsh working
environment (Kirkman & Rosen, 1999).
Wellins, Byham, and Wilson
(1991, p. 7-8) report "clear indications of higher productivity and job
satisfaction among those workers who were given more control of their
jobs."

These
team structures gained popularity within organizations seeking to fully empower
employees.  The benefits of
empowered teams were enthusiastically touted (Orsburn, Moran, Musselwhite,
& Zenger, 1990; Wellins, Byham, & Wilson, 1993).  Wellins (1991) reported wide initial
success.  Early on, the majority of
executives predicted that half of their work force would be organized into
self-managed teams by the middle or end of the 90’s (Wellins).  Though some caution was given, it was
overshadowed by the unbridled excitement for empowered teams' promised benefits
(Orsburn, et al.; Moran, Musselwhite, & Zenger, 1990; Wellins; Wellins, et
al.).

Team-based
organizations experience important and unique challenges.  Management has a significant impact upon
the ability of the team to become empowered (Dew, 1995).  A supportive attitude among team members
for empowerment has a significant positive effect (Hut & Molleman,
1998).  Given the appropriate time,
environment, leadership, training, satisfaction, and a sense of accomplishment,
teams have improved their performance (McNerney, 1994).

Managers
may not appreciate the level of difficulty for reaching a level of
collaboration necessary to build an effective team (McNerney, 1994).  The implementation of empowered teams is
more complex than most managers have realized (Yeatts & Barnes, 1996).  Some of the contemporary authors in the
1990's might have amplified some of these problems.  Orsburn, Moran, Musselwhite, and Zenger
(1990) proposed a time-sequenced, five-stage model.  They predicted that the first two stages
were attainable in nine months.  They
further predicted that Stages 3 and 4, hallmarked by leader-centered teams and
tightly formed teams, were reachable in twelve months.  Therefore, an expectation was set for the
attainment of the highest form of empowerment, the self-managed team, shortly
after one year (Orsburn, et al.).  Other
factors my have deemed this expected timeline for the development of empowered teams
to be somewhat unreasonable.  Resistance
to the widespread use of empowered teams, especially within union environments,
has been reported (Steinburg & Rissler, 1991).  Managers, practitioners, and researchers
have discovered that the complexity involved with implementing empowered teams was
greater than anticipated, resulting in an overall resistance to it (Caramanica,
Ferris & Little, 2001).

Team
members required extensive skill development more often possessed by management
(Wellins & George, 1993).  Most
empowered teams found that both problem solving ability and boundary
management, necessary for bargaining and reaching agreements with suppliers and
buyers inside and outside of the organization, required high-level skills and
the explicit support of upper management (Hut & Molleman, 1998).  Some of the expectations and level of
involvement may have been exaggerated.  "They often become involved in
company-wide issues such as vendor quality, safety, and business planning"
(Wellins & George, p.27).  There
was an expectation that any organization that implemented empowered teams would
realize significant performance benefits.
An empowered team-based organization was to become leaner, with fewer
layers of managers and supervisors.
The remaining leaders were to become coaches.  New reward systems, tending to be skill
or team-based rather than seniority-based, were needed.  There was an expectation that employees
learn all needed skills within the team (Wellins, 1991).  The expectations for these complex
roles, skills, and processes were rarely fulfilled (Dew, 1995; Wageman, 1997;
Hut & Molleman, 1998).

In
most instances, the performance benefits were clear to management.  Experience would demonstrate that most
teams never reached the level of complex development promised by the experts of
the time (Hut & Molleman, 1998).
Some of the causes for implementation failure were confirmed by Dew
(1995), Wageman (1997), and Hut and Molleman.  Though there were many benefits of
empowered teams, successful team development needed to address the
implementation issues of lack of management support and communication,
inappropriate human resource systems, lack of training and development, and
unrealistic expectations (Wellins & George, 1993).

Some of the
largest issues were a readjustment of management expectations away from fully
empowered team development to a more realistic level of team development.  Additionally, management needed to
provide the necessary developmental support of resources, support systems, and
clearly understood boundaries (Hut & Molleman, 1998).  For most teams, the level of team
development may have been limited.
Other factors that played in the success or failure of empowered teams
were the role of management, group dynamics, individual attitudes, and work
characteristics.  At the time of
team implementation, most team members and managers were unaware of these
practical limitations (Hut & Molleman).

When teams are
not implemented correctly, employees may become confused and demotivated.  Managers may think effective empowerment
and self-direction involves abdication, permissiveness, overlooking poor
performance, giving up accountability, or relaxing standards (Hut &
Molleman, 1998).  There must be a
clear business reason for implementing teams, where teams can best manage whole
processes, serve an identified customer base, and develop and improve products
and services.  Effective empowerment
will not occur by simply organizing employees into a new team structure (Carr,
1992).  Carr stressed the importance
of leadership within team implementation.
“It is a mistake for companies to fail to recognize the importance
of their first-and second-level supervisors” (p.43).  Team leaders may grow frustrated and
confused about their role.  Senior
managers might declare teams as a failure and return to the command and control
method of management that achieved results in the past (Caramanica, Ferris
& Little, 2001).

For self-managed
teams, the necessary tasks should be complex.  If not, another structure may be more
appropriate (Carr, 1992).  Problem solving is a complex skill,
requiring development and transition time.
To compensate for this complexity, Herman (1999) suggested that teams
might be limited to problem identification and analysis.  Once approved by management, they should
recommend the best practice solutions to implement management’s
decisions.  Herman (1999) warned
leaders and practitioners against using empowered teams for quick turn around,
or radical change initiatives, due to the long development time necessary for
these teams.

When considering
empowered teams, some of the most significant issues to be addressed are:
unrealistic management expectations (Herman, 1999), lack of clear understanding
and motivation for the initiative (Dew, 1995), unclear leader and member roles
(Roy, 2003), an attitude that teams are one-size-fits-all (Wageman, 1997), and
lack of support for the time and resources necessary to build the team (Hut
& Molleman, 1998).  A long and
natural sequence of events to implement teams must be considered and
planned.  One of the most important
and overlooked steps is the ongoing support and development that is needed long
after the initiative has been officially launched (Wageman, 1997).  Leadership support is critical for the
implementation of any empowerment initiative to be successful.

The
Importance of Leadership Support

Wageman (1997)
cautioned against dismissing the importance of leadership behavior.  The leader's coaching behavior is
important to the team's success.
Specifically, leaders must provide clear and engaging direction aligned
with the organization, challenge the entire team to make decisions with clearly
defined authority, utilize team-based reward systems, provide resources, and
promote strategic thinking.  There
is an important role of leadership in supporting the development of these
success factors, starting from top management down through the level of team leader
(Wageman, 1997).

An important role
of management should be to provide information and perspectives, which are
normally unavailable to team members.
Management should give team members the space, time, and support to
deliberate and work through the conflict that predictably happens in teams
(Stoner & Hartmann, 1993).
Management may not have the patience to allow the team to grow and
develop to this level of optimal performance.  This lack of patience for teams may be a
mistake, since building teams take considerable time, 12 to 24 months with
consultants regularly intervening (Stoner & Hartmann).  Management's patience and support for
teams can be rewarding, since a successful, harmonious, and cooperative team is
a direct reflection upon effective management (Wolff, 1988).

Team members need
to feel a sense of pride and purpose, information, recognition, challenge, and
self-development.  This can be best
influenced by attentive and supportive, results-oriented managers (Rabby,
2001).   Dew (1995) suggested
practitioners and senior management support the transition to empowered teams
by providing strategies for team leadership development.  Implementing a change process towards
empowerment requires the readiness and involvement of team leaders in the
planning process (Dew, 1995).  To sustain
the change from supervision to team leadership, influential coaches and mentors
must help facilitate the transition from autocratic to democratic leadership
(Dew, 1995).

Teams must
develop the proper knowledge, skills, and authority to make decisions (Herman,
1999).  True measures of success are
the actions and results achieved by teams.
To support this, team leaders need to have had prior success with gaining
senior management's support.  Team
leaders play an important role in this regard.  An empowered team’s value includes
decision–making authority.
Herman cautioned against asking empowered teams to validate decisions
that have already been made under the guise of empowerment.  This is manipulative and
demotivating.  Management must
honestly assess whether the team is being organized to solve problems, make
recommendations, or to delay a management decision (Morris, 1991).  Finally, implementation effectiveness
must be objectively evaluated and readjusted.

Transition from Empowered Teams to Shared
Leadership

There are some
important lessons learned from empowered teams and the degree of leadership
support that is necessary for this team-based structure to work
effectively.  Vertical leadership
behavior and team members' production/service responsibilities have been found
to be positively correlated with team empowerment (Kirkman & Rosen, 1999).  When teams had access to important
information and resources generally held by management, higher levels of
empowerment developed (Kirkman & Rosen).  Avolio, Bass and Jung (1996) suggest
that a goal of transformational leadership is to develop leaders or shared leadership
within a group, citing self-managed teams as an example.  Vertical transformational leadership, supplementing
transactional leadership, developed shared leadership within teams (Avolio
& Bass, 2004).  It should so,
not merely by empowering others, but through developing the capability to
determine one's own course of action (Avolio & Bass).  The transformational leader develops
others to reach a higher potential (Burns, 1978).  Overall, highly empowered teams were
found to be more effective than less empowered teams (Kirkman & Rosen,
1999).  Autonomy, alone, does not
predict overall effectiveness.  Important
factors for effective teams are the teams' experience of potency,
meaningfulness, and impact.  The
important outcomes of team empowerment are team productivity, customer service,
job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and team commitment (Kirkman &
Rosen).

Developing shared
leadership requires a cultural change.
Schein (1986) warned of simplistic views of how culture begins, evolves,
and changes.  Leadership
expectations or resistance to shared leadership may prevent its emergence and
development, similar to the resistance to empowered teams.  Line managers influence the development
of a sharing culture.  Knowledge
hoarding increases during change (Schein, 2000) and would prevent the
development of shared leadership.  Ineffective
or unsupportive vertical leadership can be a barrier to effectively developing
a team with shared leadership.  Team
leaders that are willing to take risks and share information in support of
developing effective teams need to be identified (Myers, 1999).

As employees are
empowered within flattened team-based environments, self-leadership is
necessary for the distribution and sharing of leadership in knowledge-based
teams (Pearce & Manz, 2005).
Self-leadership not only involves meeting set standards but also
analyzing, establishing, and modifying them.  It also involves self-motivation,
self-influence, and self-reward (Pearce & Manz).  "Shared leadership entails a
simultaneous, ongoing, mutual influence process within a team that involves the
serial emergence of all official as well as unofficial leaders" (p.
134).  It is important to note that
Pearce and Manz did not propose that self-leadership and shared leadership
replace vertical leadership.  Since
shared leadership does not displace the role of vertical leader as was often the
case in self-managed teams, the degree of leadership resistance for shared
leadership may not be as high as that experienced against self-managed
teams.

Shared Leadership Research

Simply
stated, shared leadership is an alternative form of leadership.  This leadership is collectively held by
all team members.  Evidence of
shared leadership is the rotation and distribution of leadership
responsibilities within a team (Parker, 1990).  Shared leadership research appears to
have flourished shortly after the appearance of self-managed team research,
occurring with greater frequency in the 1990s.  Self-managed teams represent, by
definition, an organizational structure requiring the emergence of shared
leadership.  To date, the research
of shared leadership is predominantly a study of leadership within self-managed
teams (Pearce, 1997; Cox, Pearce, & Perry, 2004).

Two
sources of leadership influence in teams are the vertical leader, either
appointed or emergent, and the other is the collective, shared leadership
within the team (Cox, Pearce, & Perry, 2004).  Shared leadership occurs when team members share
equal responsibility for ensuring that all tasks necessary to accomplish a
goal are completed (Pearce & Conger, 2003).  Whereas self-managed teams may require
shared leadership, shared leadership, by definition, does not require a
self-managed team.  While a team may
have a formal leader, leadership often shifts among team members depending upon
the circumstances, the needs, skills, and maturity of the team (Pearce & Conger).

Though there is
no one accepted definition of shared leadership, or way to measure it,
quantitative studies of shared leadership have been dominated by Pearce and
colleagues (Pearce, 1997; Perry, Pearce, & Sims, 1999; Pearce & Sims,
2002; Pearce, Sims, Cox, Ball, Schnell, Smith, & Trevino, 2003; Pearce & Conger, 2003; Pearce & Manz, 2005).  There has been significant research in
another form of shared leadership, co-leadership, as leadership shared between
two leaders.  Citing co-leadership
as a shared leadership construct, Heenan and Bennis (1999) posit its necessity
for executives leading organizations in complex environments.  Judge and Ryman (2001) advise that CEOs
of two organizations involved in a strategic alliance may share leadership to
ensure success of strategic alliances between two firms.  In their view of shared leadership as
co-leadership, they contend that post alliance innovation often requires top
executives to "abandon their known and proven bases of expertise" (p.
77).   O'Toole, Galbraith, and Lawler
III (2002) agree with the practical application of two CEOs sharing the
leadership role to move beyond the difficult transition following mergers and
acquisitions.  However, for
co-leadership to work, key factors such as "joint selection, complementary
skills and emotional orientations, and mechanisms for coordination"
(O'Toole, Galbraith, & Lawler III, p. 82) must be ensured.  Within these views of co-leadership,
leadership can be an effective shared leadership construct.

Another
transition from vertical leadership to shared leadership was suggested by Cohen
(2004) through the construct of entrepreneurial leadership.  Entrepreneurial leadership can be found
among employees who are "opportunity obsessed – constantly looking
for unfulfilled needs, gaps in service or product, and broken processes"
(Cohen, p. 16).  Entrepreneurial
leaders are usually vertical leaders at the top of an organizational unit.  These leaders are skilled at motivating
others and are comfortable with sharing their leadership.  Cohen proposed that other
entrepreneurial leaders might be found at any level of the organization,
working to advance constructive change.
A necessary condition, however, is an organization that supports this
form of leadership, reward systems that encourage risk-taking, and support to
build effective cross-functional teams.
All of these contribute to the building of shared entrepreneurial
leadership.

In search of a
shared leadership construct, Yang and Shao (1996) proposed that eight
leadership roles must evolve through the actions of the vertical leader, based
upon the life cycle of the organization.
A leadership behavioral shift is necessary as the team develops.  In response to the environment and needs
of the team, leadership roles must shift from innovator and broker, to mentor
and facilitator, to monitor, coordinator, director and producer, and finally
back to broker and innovator (Yang & Shao).  Successful self-managed teams must then
develop all eight of these shared leadership roles within the team.  This model has not been used by other
researchers to study shared leadership.

Pearce (1997)
proposed an overall causal model of change management team effectiveness,
dealing with multiple variables assigned to meta-dimensions.  He proposed that four antecedents:
vertical leadership, shared leadership, team size, and networking behaviors
would positively impact team effectiveness through two intervening variables of
group potency and citizenship behavior.
Pearce summarized a set of leadership archetypes, derived from past
research.  His proposition was that
the behaviors, collated by archetype and used to assess vertical leadership,
could also be used to assess the collective leadership construct of shared
leadership.  His research included
the leadership archetype styles of aversive, directive, transactional,
transformational, and empowering.
To control the number of variable entering within the statistical tests,
Pearce organized directive, aversive, and transactional leadership behaviors
into the meta-dimensions of "vertical controlling" and "shared
controlling" leadership.  He
organized transformational and empowering leadership behaviors into
"vertical catalyzing" and "shared catalyzing"
leadership.  His research supported
the following relationships:

Vertical
controlling leadership negatively influences group potency.

Vertical
catalyzing leadership positively influences group potency and team
effectiveness.

Shared controlling
leadership negatively influences citizenship behavior and team effectiveness.

Shared catalyzing
leadership positively influences citizenship behavior and team effectiveness.

Team size
negatively influences citizenship behavior and team effectiveness.

Networking
behavior positively influences group potency, citizenship behavior, and team
effectiveness.

Pearce's
(1997) categorization of controlling and catalyzing leadership constructs
managed the number of statistical variables used in the study; however, transactional
contingent reward leadership style includes the setting and gaining agreement
for team member expectations (Bass, 1996).
This and other important transactional leadership effectiveness
variables (Burns, 1978; Bass, 1985) may play an important role in developing
shared leadership.  This unique role
may have been lost by clustering the transactional leadership variables of
contingent reward and management by exception-active with other more
controlling leadership variables.

Pearce (1997) hypothesized
that team size negatively influences citizen behavior and team
effectiveness.  To further support Pearce's
work, Peace challenged others to further research the relative importance of
vertical and shared leadership as they relate to team maturity, team size, team
member familiarity, team diversity, task complexity, team proximity (including
geographical dispersion), and crisis decision-making.  Most of these additional variables
reflect team demographics and are relatively simple constructs with simple
scale metrics.

Bradford and
Cohen (1998) proposed post-heroic forms of leadership, including shared
leadership.  Again, they cautioned
against eliminating the important, catalyzing vertical leadership role in
support of shared leadership.  "Leaders still have plenty of work
and remain accountable for the unit's performance.  But they must now encourage and build a
shared responsibility system, where the leader and direct reports collaborate
in the management of the unit" (p. 15).  Through this perspective, transactional
and transformational vertical leadership may be necessary forms of leadership
to develop shared leadership.

Meanwhile, as
Pearce (1997) had set the stage for empirically based, quantitative shared
leadership research, many qualitative studies of shared leadership had
dominated the field.     Taggart's (2000)
qualitative approach sought to understand the capability and challenges of a
large federal service delivery office to create an environment of shared
leadership.  The study was limited
to the conditions within one specific federal office.  Most of the shared leadership research
is qualitative studies, applied to the academic leadership held among teachers
and administrators.  One
exception to the numerous qualitative studies in academic environments was a
relatively straightforward quantitative research study that demonstrated
positive correlations between the shared leadership of educational stakeholders
and the development of school district technology plans with the degree of
satisfaction experienced by the stakeholders (Decker, 1998).  Here, the construct of shared leadership
was synonymous with collaboration and input by stakeholders.

Pearce's (1997) groundbreaking
research studied shared leadership within empowered change management
teams.  Perry, Pearce, and Sims
(1999) proposed a shared leadership model for developing empowered selling team
effectiveness, whereas team proximity, ability, maturity, diversity, and size
affect the development of shared leadership.  Selling task characteristics of
interdependence and complexity might be enhanced by shared leadership in
achieving team effectiveness.  They
further proposed that shared leadership could contribute to team effectiveness
via the development of team responses of team trust, team commitment, group
potency, satisfaction, and cohesiveness.
Shared leadership might also contribute to the development of behavioral
responses including effort, communication, productivity, task performance,
absenteeism, and citizenship behaviors.
Shared leadership, team responses, behavioral responses, and selling
task characteristics might all contribute to the development of team
effectiveness.  This conceptual model
was simply proposed as a guide to future research in this area.

Using the five leadership
archetypes of aversive, directive, transactional, transformational, and
empowering, Pearce and Sims (2002) found both vertical and shared leadership to
be a useful predictor of team effectiveness.  The style of leadership showed
correlations in different directions.
Both vertical and shared aversive leader were negatively related to team
self-ratings of team effectiveness.
Manager-rated team effectiveness was negatively correlated with directive-style
transactional leadership.  Internal
customer ratings of team effectiveness were also negatively related to shared
directive leadership.  Both vertical
and shared transformational leadership were positively related to team and
customer ratings of team effectiveness.
Team self-ratings and manager ratings of team effectiveness were
positively related to vertical empowering leadership.

Pearce and Sims
(2002) suggest that future research might find that mature teams possessing
both technical and leadership skills might display more shared leadership.  Other factors affecting the likelihood
of shared leadership display might be "team skills, team member
familiarity, team member proximity, and team maturity" (Pearce & Sims,
p. 187).

The
Team Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (TMLQ) (Avolio, Sivasubramaniam,
Murry, Jung, & Garger, 2003) has been used to define and measure shared
leadership.  This instrument is a modification
of the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) (Bass & Avolio, 1996) and
measures overall leadership possessed by the group, again within the areas of
transformational, transactional, and passive/avoidant behavior.  The focus of the TMLQ targets the
overall shared leadership for the entire team, not its individual members.

Extending beyond
change management and empowered selling teams, Cox, Pearce, and Perry (2004) propose
a shared leadership model as applicable to new product development teams.  Supporting shared leadership, Cox,
Pearce and Perry proposed the independent variables of vertical leadership,
team formation, the boundaries of the team and its members, leadership support,
and the level of empowerment.  They
also proposed that the team characteristics of proximity (geographical collocation),
team size, members' ability, diversity, and maturity are viable independent
variables affecting the development of shared leadership.

Cox, Pearce, and
Perry (2004) further suggested that given the existence of shared leadership
within a team, the important outcomes of positive affective, behavioral, and
cognitive changes result.  Additionally, Cox, Pearce, and Perry
proposed that shared leadership results in overall team effectiveness, which
may have quantitative, qualitative, and time benefits, typical of existing
business productivity metrics.

In a quantitative study of church
management team members, Wood (2004) investigated the relationship of shared
leadership, team behaviors, and team structure on a set of dependent outcome
variables of role and stress (role overload, role conflict, role ambiguity, job
stress) and job satisfaction. The control variables were age, ethnicity,
gender, education, team size, job role, job tenure, and team tenure.  The study found shared leadership to be
negatively related with stress outcomes and positively related with job
satisfaction.  It indicated a
positive relationship between empowered team behaviors and shared leadership as
well as team behavior positively influencing satisfaction and negatively
influencing stress outcomes.
Horizontal team structure did not relate to shared leadership or
empowered team behavior.  It did,
however, have a positive relationship with role conflict.  Wood warned that a lack of a reliable
measure of organizational structure was detrimental to the study, raising
caution about the research results.

Pearce and Manz
(2005) proposed five different factors influenced the conditions under which
shared leadership may emerge.  These
factors are the level of urgency, importance of employee commitment, the need
for creativity and innovation, the level of interdependence, and the degree of
complexity.  Oppositely, organizations
requiring employee compliance to routine may require strong vertical
leadership.  In these situations, employee
commitment, which is a "willingness to go above and beyond the call of
duty" (Pearce & Manz, p. 136), may not be required.  Under these conditions, one would not
expect to find shared leadership.  Alternative
forms of leadership may be necessary for organizations requiring a higher level
of creativity and innovation.
Employees would need to be fully involved in problem-solving,
opportunity-thinking, and influencing self and peers.  One might expect a highly interdependent
empowered team to have developed shared leadership.  The level of task complexity within an
organization, such as in high-tech organizations, might necessitate shared
leadership.  It might be
unreasonable to expect one individual, the vertical leader, to possess the
knowledge and skills necessary to deal with the complexities facing such an
organization.

In support of an
important role for vertical leadership and empowered organizations possessing
shared leadership, the role of team leader, facilitator, or coach are necessary
role models to facilitate process and allow the team members to contribute
expert knowledge and skills to the tasks at hand (Pearce & Manz,
2005).  Pearce and Manz suggested
the organization must promote the development of alternative leadership forms
through organizational rewards and training. In addition to vertical leadership
development, team members must also develop leadership skills, if shared
leadership is to be developed within organizations.

Choi (2006)
proposed a simple measurement of shared leadership claiming there is no one
agreed method to assess it.  Arguing
that shared leadership is a mutually shared process occurring in the public
sector, Choi studied the relationships among organizational structure, culture,
context, and shared leadership.
Choi applied multiple regression analysis to a conceptual model of ten
independent variables and one control variable (gender) against only one dependent
variable of shared leadership.  The
results showed that organizational crisis, technology, innovative culture, and
hierarchy of position variables are significantly and positively associated
with shared leadership and reflected a partial relationship with organizational
structure, culture, and context factors.
The study suggested that shared and vertical leadership coexist in
bureaucratic organizations.

Influential
Variables for the Emergence of Shared Leadership

Vertical Leadership

Early industrial
age organizations demanded leadership approaches that still permeate
contemporary thinking about leadership theory.  American railroads and the industrial age
perpetuated the need for management principles touting top to bottom
leadership, unity of followers under the leader's direction, managerial
oversight, and Taylor's
scientific management. In his seminal work, The
Principles of Scientific Management, published in 1911, Taylor's study of management practice and
worker efficiency consisted of comparative observations measuring worker
production output and efficiency.  The focus of Taylor's study was the effective use of time and
motion and the productivity gained by the use of the right tool.  After having directed workers in the new
method, an improvement of loading 47 ½ tons of coal per day rather than
the average 12 ½ tons was achieved (Clark,
2000).  Taylor's guiding philosophy for scientific
management, was a belief in the application of scientific principles to the act
of management. The goal was to achieve harmony, cooperation, maximum output,
efficiency, and prosperity (Robinson, 1992).  With the work of Taylor and other
traditional management theorists, the foundation of management control over
employees was established early and strongly within management theory.  This may have suppressed distributed or
shared leadership theory development from occurring earlier (Pearce &
Conger, 2003).

Perrow (1973)
summarized these traditional management theorists of Taylor, Fayol and Weber:

This
school started by parading simple-minded injunctions to plan ahead, keep
records, write-down policies, specialize, be decisive, and keep your span of
control to about six people. These injunctions were needed as firms grew in
size and complexity, since there were few models around beyond the railroads,
military and the Catholic Church to guide organizations. (Perrow,1973, p.
42)

Within this
rationalist approach, vertical leaders direct, reinforce rules, processes, and
deadlines.  "In other words, it
is not the free will of individual members that directly influences their own
decisions.  Instead, behavior is
deliberately molded by management" (Davis, 1996, p.42).  These ideas influenced the leadership
construct of aversive and directive leadership (Pearce & Manz, 2005).

Pearce and Manz
(2005) opine that even the more contemporary and attractive leadership theories
of transaction and transformation "emphasize a one-way influence process
of leaders over followers" and a "primary focus, and source of
thinking, ideas and decision-making is designated as the role of the
leader" (p. 132).  In support
of this assertion, leadership and power are intertwined (Hickson, et al,
1971).  Vertical leaders possess
power when they help an organization cope with uncertainty.  The uncertainty caused by
interdepartmental systems' division of labor is managed through leadership's
interpersonal and task connections (Hickson, et al, 1971).  Leaders share a common need for
power.  This power strives for
dominance over tasks, while the social form of power creates a positive work
climate (McClelland & Burnham, 1975).

However,
over-reliance on technical or task aspects of the job might be at the expense
of employees’ feelings of empowerment and sense of customer loyalty (Robbins,
2003).  Two balancing dimensions of
leadership, “initiating structure” and “consideration”
exemplify the behavior of effective leaders.  ”You can't simply approach a person
or group and expect them to follow you, regardless of the power resources you
possess.  You must build meaningful
connections” (Preston, 2004, p.52).  Even so, the transactional leadership
(Bass, 1985) process is a power-based reciprocal exchange between leaders and
followers.  The transactional leader
"clarifies what the associates need to do for a reward" and is an
"essential component of the full range of effective leadership"
(Avolio & Bass, p. 21).
Thamhain (2004) described a balanced leadership influence upon team
performance in the areas of people, process, work, and tools and
techniques.  Thamhain (2004) provided
guidelines for effective vertical team leadership: Define work process and team
structure, develop organizational interfaces and communication channels,
properly staff and organize the team, and create proper reward systems.  These examples are congruent with transactional
leadership actions (Bass).
Transactional leadership also provides an important element of a
balanced vertical leadership model.
This need for balance provides the rationale for incorporating it within
this research.

The concept of
transformational leadership was described by Burns (1978) as the process of
raising awareness for the importance of achieving outcomes in developing the
motivation that transcended self-interest.
Ultimately, the transformational leader develops others to reach a
higher potential.  To further the
goal of helping others reach their potential, Goleman (1999) suggested that an
important ability for every manager is to develop “emotional
competence” (p.19).  This
begins with self-awareness and awareness of others.  Bass (1985) identified five factors of
transformational leadership: idealized influence behaviors, idealized influence
attributes, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and
individualized consideration.

Transformational
leadership, augmenting transactional leadership, develops others (Avolio &
Bass, 2004).  It does so, not
through merely empowering others, but through developing the capability to
determine one's own course of action.
Avolio and Bass were careful to clarify that transformational leadership
does not replace transactional leadership.

Transformational
leadership supplements transactional leadership.  Examples of transformative (Bass, 1985)
and considerate actions are to stimulate enthusiasm, excitement, and
professional interests; ensure senior management support; build commitment;
manage conflict and problems; and foster a culture of continuous support and
improvement (Thamhain, 2004).  The
need for developing capability within a team, not merely empowering them,
provides the rationale for including the transformational form of vertical leadership
within this research.

To
measure vertical leadership effectiveness, the Multifactor Leadership
Questionnaire (MLQ) assesses three major styles of leadership (Avolio &
Bass, 2004).  Transformational
leadership is measured via idealized attributes and behaviors, inspirational
motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individual consideration.  Transactional leadership, associated with
behaviors of constructive and corrective transactions, is measured along the
factors of contingent reward and active management-by-exception.  Transactional leadership, though
necessary, is insufficient to sustain leadership effectiveness.  Passive/avoidant behavior, which is
undesirable, but often present in ineffective leadership, is measured along the
factors of passive management-by-exception and laissez-faire (Avolio &
Bass).

The MLQ is one of
many valid assessments. Yukl, Gordon and Taber (2002) posit that a major
problem in leadership research is the lack of agreement concerning the
construct of leadership.  They
propose a hierarchical taxonomy with three metacategories of task,
relationship, and change behaviors. Within leadership task behaviors, they
propose the skills of short-term planning, clarifying responsibilities, and
monitoring operations and performance.   Relationship behaviors include
supporting others, developing or coaching, recognizing, consulting, empowering,
and external monitoring.  Change
behaviors include envisioning change, encouraging innovative thinking, and
taking personal risks.  Though the
MLQ is imperfect, it has been widely used and validated for leadership
research.

Transactional or
transformational leadership actions may be displayed by the vertical leader,
the team, or both (Bass, 1986; Pearce, 1997).  Avolio, Bass and Jung (1996) suggested
that a goal of transformational leadership is to develop another individual's
vertical leadership or a team's collective, shared leadership.  Transformational leadership influences
team performance (Pearce, 1997; Dionne, et al, 2004).  Dionne, et al (2004) posit that the
intermediate outcomes of shared vision, team commitment, empowered team
environment, and functional team conflict may facilitate team processes of team
communication, cohesion, and conflict management that leverage team
performance.   Transactional
and transformational leadership are only two styles of leadership described in
recent literature.  Pearce, et al.
(2003) support the existence of directive, transactional, transformational, and
empowering leadership styles.  They
warned, however, that due to possible methodological error, additional research
might confirm aversive style as separate and distinct from directive style.

Research of
alternative forms of leadership such as shared leadership is still in its
infancy.  Gordon and Yukl (2004)
outlined several reasons for slow progress in defining leadership factors for
improving organizational performance.
Some of the issues are the quest for universal leadership truths that
focus on outcomes rather than leadership processes.  Academics and practitioners have
frequently misunderstood the intentions of each other's leadership research and
perceived importance.  Whereas
strategic leadership's focus is most often the relationship between leader and
subordinate, there are alternative structural forms, such as, empowered and
cross-functional teams that have received little research into their own unique
forms of leadership processes.
Gordon and Yukl (2004) opine that most leadership research has been
concerned primarily with granting subordinates more delegated authority, rather
than the development of shared leadership.
The extant shared leadership research, when compared with traditional
leadership studies, is minimal.

More
than an individual's ability predicts leadership effectiveness.  The degree of support within an organization's
culture influences leadership competence and effectiveness (Harris, 2002).  Rost's (1995) definition of
leadership, "an influence relationship
wherein leaders and collaborators influence one another about real changes that reflect their mutual purposes"
(Rost, p. 134), suggests that leadership development is complex.  This complexity may lead to alternative
leadership forms.  "Leaders and collaborators may change places.
There may be a number of leadership
relationships in one organization, and the same people are not necessarily
the leaders in these different relationships" (Rost, p. 134).  Yukl (2002) agrees that leadership is
not unidirectional. From a research perspective, leadership may be either a
dependent or independent variable.
Leaders may influence the behavior of followers.  However, followers may influence the
behavior of leaders.  Both are
influenced by the organizational context and situation.  Yukl suggests that further research
might better grasp this complex interplay between vertical and shared
leadership.

Team Size

The overall
effectiveness of teams has been proven to be related to the size of the
team.  It is reasonable to conclude
that team size has a similar relationship to the development of shared
leadership.  Campion, et al (1993)
found a negative correlation between team size and performance.  The overall productivity within new
product teams has been reported as optimal when team size approaches between
five and ten members (Peters & Waterman, 1982).  A positive relationship between small
team size (less than seven) and productivity was confirmed by Peters (1997).  Team size has been found to be
negatively correlated to customer ratings of team effectiveness, whereas,
manager and team self-ratings of team size were negative in tendency but not
statistically significant (Pearce & Sims, 2002).  Faure (1995) discovered a negative
relationship between team size and individual team member effort.  Team members may lose a sense of personal
efficacy as their individual contribution becomes lost within the large team
identity.  Oppositely, team size as
a moderating variable, has been shown to have no effect on the relationships among
transformational leadership, team trust, and team commitment within software
development teams (Hsu, 2006).

Team
Maturity

Gersick (1988)
researched the dynamics of project teams and discovered that teams matured over
time, but not necessary in a sequential step-by-step format, such as that
suggested by Tuckman (1965).  Teams
developed in a pattern of "punctuated equilibrium" (p. 9), whereby
the team experienced an initial phase of activity.  Marked by a transitional period of
inertia at the halfway point of a deliverable, when reminded, the team
experienced an additional phase of urgency.  At this point, a revolution of action
and direction reenergized the team through phases or cycles until the task or
milestone was completed.  Gersick
stressed the importance of the start and transition stage as times when the
team was most capable of being open to influence.  The way in which a team was started was
found to be predictive of their success later in their development (Gersick).

Stoner and
Hartmann (1993) warned that management must not push too hard on teams during
their initial development phase; otherwise, they will negatively affect the
team's overall effectiveness.
Maturity, by any definition, involves time.  Management should give team members the
time and support to deliberate and work through their issues (Stoner &
Hartmann).  Management may not have
the patience to allow the team to grow and develop to the level of optimal
performance associated with shared leadership (Stoner & Hartmann).  Stoner and Hartmann suggest that
management should expect team development to take 12 to 24 months with
consultants regularly intervening for a team to reach a level of effectiveness.

There have been
several propositions that the team characteristic of team maturity is a viable
independent variable positively affecting the development of shared leadership
(Pearce, 1997; Pearce & Sims, 2002; Cox, Pearce & Perry, 2004).

Team
Member Familiarity

The degree to which team members
have worked together in the past within a team environment has been linked to
important team variables.  Low
levels of team member familiarity among coal miners have been related to low
levels of productivity (Goodman & Leyden, 1991).   Decision-making effectiveness, an
important team skill, improves over time as group members become more familiar
with one another (Tuckman, 1965; Watson, et al, 1991).  Blickensderfer (2000) found that team
member familiarity within tennis partners was positively related to the shared
knowledge of rules and responsibilities.
This shared knowledge was significantly related to team coordination.  Resick (2004) found that team member
familiarity influences the ability for team members to develop shared
task-focused mental models, which were positively related with team
coordination.  Since shared
leadership would require team coordination to exist, it is reasonable to
propose that the level of familiarity among team members would be positively
correlated with the development of shared leadership.

Team Member Proximity

As teams are
deployed within the competitive landscape of the global economy, one or more
team members are often located in other cities or countries.  This may have negative implications for
the productive development of shared leadership within teams.  It is possible that due to this dynamic,
team members may have a greater dependency upon the structures, communication,
and direction set by the vertical leader.
In other words, geographical separation of team members may prevent, or
increase the difficulty for the development of shared leadership.  Individual team members located outside
of the main geographical location of the organization may suffer from
disembodiment (Childs & McGrath, 2001).  Pooley (2005) warned of communication
issues arising from geographical separation.  Within different geographies, cultural
boundaries may amplify the differences.
Though it is has been demonstrated that modern communication tools, such
as videophone and Internet-based electronic meeting software, may have
favorable effects upon team member ratings of satisfaction and productivity
(Vanjani, 1996), geography and its embedded culture makes the development of a
healthy team dynamics challenging.
Schein (1986) warned of taking a simplistic view for how culture begins,
evolves, and changes over time.
Managers must not ignore the effects of cultural issues brought on by
different organizational life stages.
Both geographical and organizational cultures affect a team's ability to
develop.  Leadership should expect difficulty
for shared leadership development when membership is geographically
dispersed.  Line managers influence
the development of a sharing culture.
Knowledge hoarding increases during change.  This knowledge hoarding across
geographical boundaries might be easier for team members that are divided by
geographical boundaries.  Perry,
Peace, Sims, Jr. (1999) proposed that proximity affects the development of
shared leadership within selling teams.
Additionally, other functional teams may be affected by proximity of
members (Pearce & Sims, Jr., 2002).  Therefore, this research may validate a
negative relationship between geographical dispersion and the development of
shared leadership.

Team Membership Load

In organizations,
more demands are being placed on team members to do more with less.  Multiple team memberships are a common
occurrence.  McGrath (1991) assumes
the nature of groups to be loosely coupled, referring to the fact that
individuals are members of more than one group.  Role stress can occur when team members
are placed on too many teams.  This
might occur in organizations with cross-functional project or process teams,
typical of high-tech organizations.  McGrath also asserts that teams and their
members must perform multiple tasks concurrently, which might further add to
role stress and time pressures.  The
time allocated to accomplish the goals must be reasonable. Task conflicts, when
substantive and reasonable in nature, positively supports group performance
(Pelled, Eisenhardt, & Xin, 1999).
However, when team members are assigned to an excessive number of teams,
the resulting conflict can render the individual members and the team less
effective.  Time pressure, a result
of team member load, has been shown to be somewhat moderated by group potency
(Gevers, van Eerde, & Rutte, 2001).  Team membership load and its associated excessive
role stress and time pressure may be negatively related with shared leadership
and lower team performance.

Group Potency

Group
potency, a collective construct, is the collective belief within a team that it
can be effective (Guzzo, et al., 1993; Bligh, Pearce, & Kohles,
2006).  Group potency is a
"group-level construct parallel to the individual-level variable of
self-efficacy because both are motivational constructs that reflect appraisals
of capabilities" (de Jong, de Ruyter, & Wetzels, 2005).  Though group potency is related to
self-efficacy, it is separate and distinct from it (Bandura & Locke, 2003;
Bligh, Pearce, & Kohles) due to differences in levels of
conceptualization (Chan, 1998).
Group potency is a collective and a generalized construct, assessing the
overall team's belief that it can be effective, whereas, self-efficacy is an
individual's task-specific belief about one's own competence (de Jong, de
Ruyter, & Wetzels).  The group
potency construct has been validated by Guzzo, et al., and its eight-item
assessment has been widely used in group potency research.  Group potency is related to vertical and
shared leadership (Pearce, 1997).
Vertical leadership affects team performance through the enhancement of
group potency (Lester, Meglino, & Korsgaard, 2002).  Group potency has been widely studied
and shown to have positive effects upon the group outcomes of satisfaction,
effort, and performance (Guzzo, et al.; Gevers, van Eerde, & Rutte, 2001)
and team effectiveness (Pearce, Gallagher, & Ensley, 2002).  Group potency is important in reducing
the negative effects of perceived time pressure (Gevers, van Eerde, &
Rutte).  Group potency has been
positively linked to group performance (Hecht, Allen, Klammer and Kelly, 2002).
Shared mental models of task
performance have been found to be related to group potency, which in turn
predicts team performance (Resick, 2004).  Teams within individualistic cultures,
such as the US,
display more group potency and functional heterogeneity than teams within
collectivistic cultures.  No
differences in performance were found (Sosik & Jung, 2002).

Charismatic
leadership effects group performance through the mediating effects of group
potency (Lester, Meglino, & Korsgaard, 2002).  In this longitudinal study, the degree
of group potency diminished slightly after some initial performance, but less
so for groups under high charismatic leaders versus low charismatic
leaders.

Summary

A logical
developmental pathway has been drawn to the point of the most recent existing
shared leadership research.  Many evolutionary
organizational and leadership initiatives have contributed to the development
of this alternative form of leadership.
To build this understanding for the need for the efficacy and benefits
of shared leadership, it was necessary to review the literature of managing
change, organizational environment, employee involvement, empowerment, team effectiveness,
the complexity of empowered teams, the importance of leadership support,
vertical transactional and transformational leadership, team demographics, group
potency, and the extant research in shared leadership.  This lengthy review has served as a
historical and logical foundation for the construction of the research methods,
discussed within the next chapter of this dissertation.

CHAPTER 3. METHODOLOGY

Introduction

This
study determines the relationship between transformational as well as
transactional vertical leadership styles with the development of shared
leadership.  It advances an
understanding of the relationships between team demographic variables of team
size, maturity, proximity, familiarity, and team membership load and the
development of shared leadership.
It further seeks to understand the relationship between vertical and
shared leadership with group potency.  The methodological approach for this
research is positivistic and quantified.
The construct of shared leadership most recently researched by Pearce
(1997) is partially used and is influenced by Bradford
and Cohen's (1998) assertion that vertical leadership's role and hierarchy need
not be eliminated.

One
of the most important criteria of good research is the clarity and focus of the
research question.  Cooper and
Schindler (2006) state the hypothesis is a specific management question that
focuses the research question.  More
specific sublevels of the research questions guide the creation and development
of the data collection instrument (Cooper & Schindler).  The research questions and hypotheses
for this research of shared leadership follow.

These
research questions and hypotheses guide this study and are answered through the
data collection instruments:

Research
Question 1. To what extent is transformational vertical leadership style
related to the emergence of shared leadership within a high-tech team?

Hypotheses
1.  There is a statistically
significant positive relationship between transformational vertical leadership
with the development of team members' shared leadership.

Research
Question 2. To what extent is transactional vertical leadership style related
to the emergence of shared leadership within a high-tech team?

Hypotheses
2.  There is a statistically
significant positive relationship between transactional contingent reward
vertical leadership with the development of team members' shared leadership.

Research
Question 3. To what extent do team demographics of team size, maturity,
proximity, familiarity, and team membership load influence the development of
shared leadership within high-tech teams?

Hypotheses
3a.  There is a statistically
significant positive relationship between the team demographic variables of
team maturity, familiarity, and proximity with the development of shared
leadership.

Hypotheses
3b.  There is a statistically
significant negative relationship between the team demographic variable of team
size and membership load with the development of shared leadership.

Research
Question 4. To what extent are vertical and shared leadership related to group
potency within high-tech teams?

Hypothesis
4a:  There is a statistically
significant positive relationship between transformational vertical leadership
with group potency.

Hypothesis
4b:  There is a statistically
significant positive relationship between transactional contingent reward
vertical leadership with group potency.

Hypothesis
4c:  There is a statistically
significant positive relationship between shared leadership with group potency.

Research Design

The
favored research design approach is described by Arbnor and Bjerke (1997, p.29)
as "reality as a concrete determining process."  Within this description, teams are seen
as an organically evolving process that is concrete and its details are
changing.  People relationships may
be described in a factual process context, and they both influence and are
influenced by their environment.
Some of these relationships are more describable, predictable, and
stable than others.  The
corresponding methodological approach is rooted in positivistic, quantitative,
and fixed methods.

Robson
(2002) believes that good research is enacted with scientific attitude,
requiring that research be carried out "systematically, skeptically, and
ethically" (p. 18).  Robson
clarifies positivism as objective knowledge being obtained from direct
experience, separated from values, based largely on quantitative data,
definable through hypotheses, and above all, capable of determining
causality.  Cooper and Schindler
(2006) believe that "good research follows the standards of the scientific
method: systematic, inherently based procedures for generating replicable
research" (p. 22).  The planned
shared leadership research design is to produce usable, replicable research
that can be applied confidently by managers and employees beyond the sole
environment in which it was originally observed.  It is for this reason that the analytical
base of a fixed, quantitative design is preferred over a qualitative one for
the research of shared leadership.  Though
it may be challenging to identify finite, predictable, causal relationships,
patterns of behaviors may be determined and quantified through validated
surveys.  These quantitative surveys
are available and validated, ensuring the ability for leaders and team members
to apply the research results to their own similar teams and organizations.
This advantage of replicating results in other organizations, places
quantitative research in a more advantageous position over qualitative research
for the study of shared leadership (Cooper & Schindler).  Other research of shared leadership
within non-academic environments has also used the quantitative research
methods (Pearce, 1997; Perry, Pearce, & Sims, 1999; Pearce & Sims,
2002; Pearce, Sims, Cox, Ball, Schnell, Smith, & Trevino, 2003; Pearce & Conger, 2003; Wood, 2004; Pearce & Manz,
2005; Choi, 2006).  This compelling
precedence clearly points this shared leadership research in the direction of a
quantitative study.

Robson
(2002) purports the value of research is to solve problems and generate
actionable items for real organizations under time and cost constraints, while
meeting the needs of the client.  To
further the clarity of the planned research method, the sampling
approach, instrumentation and measures, data collection, and data analysis and
display are discussed.  Within this
discussion, the instrument validity and ethical considerations are also
highlighted.

Sampling Approach

This
research focuses exclusively on the emergence of shared leadership within
traditional, vertical leader-led teams and high-tech organizations, neither of
which has been a previous target of shared leadership research.  This quantitative research samples the
vertical transactional and transformational leadership style, team
demographics, group potency, and shared leadership within common teams with
traditional vertical leadership roles.
As such, the population of available conventional, intact teams within
one high-tech company's engineering-based population is targeted for participation
in the research.  This population
sample has not been previously involved in shared leadership research.  The sampling
approach to survey effective vertical and shared leadership is a
questionnaire-based survey, suitable for this non-experimental explanatory
approach (Robson, 2002).  To
control some of the unknown variables outside of the scope of this study, the
boundaries of the research frame includes the largest business unit of a
high-tech organization to achieve a sense of consistency and therefore, generalizability
to similar organizations.
Initially, this selection of functional and cross-functional teams
within a for-profit, high-tech organization may provide such a frame.

Cooper
and Schindler (2006) suggest the steps in a sampling design involve the
selection of nonprobability or probability samples, defining the relevant
population and sampling frames, and selecting the sampling technique.  Robson (2002)
and Cooper and Schindler list a number of probability sampling techniques
having statistical computation advantages within quantitative research.  The shared leadership sampling design
will gather all available team and team leader samples within the Company's
largest engineering-based business unit, where the deployment of teams has been
determined to be the optimal organizational structure.  Within this engineering-based
organization, the deployment of an integrated product team (IPT) structure has
been used for approximately twenty years to manage the complexity of
engineering design for the highly technical products manufactured by this
company.  The IPT is organized to
most effectively manage the design of critical component parts that are to be
manufactured and assembled into larger, component modules of this highly
technical product.  The IPT's are led
by experienced engineers.  The IPT's
are accountable to one of many integrated product component teams (IPCT).  The IPCT is generally comprised of middle
managers representing the engineering, quality, product support, manufacturing,
and sales functions.  The IPCT's,
organized by major product module, report to the integrated product management
team (IPMT), which are comprised of senior leaders from all of the major
disciplines within the company.

Given
the size of this organization and the potential disruption that surveying an
entire organization may cause, the sampling target will be restricted to all
available IPT's managed under two or three IPCT's.  These target IPCT's are selected for the
high activity level of their IPT's at the current stage of the product life
cycle.  Of the available 60 teams
within this segment of the organization, it is anticipated that 50 teams will
participate within this research.  This
sample involves 50 vertical team leaders.
Though each team may include as few as 3 and as many as 20 team members,
it is neither expected nor necessary to sample all team members within each
team.  The key to achieving the
maximum team participation level will be gaining the support of the senior
leader in the organization with leadership responsibility of the IPCT's.  The target organization's ability to
identify the team leaders and members of existing IPT's, as held within a
database by human resources and the organization's leadership team, is necessary
to achieve this probability sample.

Common
nonprobability sampling issues, such as researcher bias, convenience and
purposive sampling, snowball or referral sampling should be avoided (Robson,
2002).  Convenience and purposive
sampling are based upon the ease and judgments of the researcher.  Similar to Pearce (1997), who managed
this bias due to the high proportional number of available change management
teams being sampled, this research will seek to include all available teams
within this organization as the target sample.  This plan to survey all available IPT's should
avoid these nonprobability sampling issues.

Instrumentation and Measures

To
answer the research questions and test the hypotheses, vertical leadership is
measured via the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) (Bass & Avolio,
1996).  The Team Multifactor
Leadership Questionnaire (TMLQ) (Avolio, Sivasubramaniam, Murry, Jung, &
Garger, 2003) is used to measure shared leadership, and is essentially similar
to the MLQ.  The group potency
construct, validated by Guzzo, et al (1993), is used in this study as a measure
of group potency.  The team
demographic variables of team size, team maturity, member familiarity, member
proximity, and team membership load are simple constructs with simple scale
metrics.  Quantitative data analysis should prove or negate the stated hypotheses
through applicable multivariate analysis and correlation tests.

Robson (2002) cites the most commonly used quantitative
scale is the summated rating or Likert scale.  Within quantitative designs, Robson
further advises that "fixed-alternative responses should be accurate,
exhaustive, mutually exclusive and on a single dimension" (p. 244) when
constructing survey questions and possible fixed response alternatives.  Quantitative data analysis requires a
clear understanding of the utility and limitations of available statistical
tools. Cooper and Schindler (2006) advise that certain parametric and
nonparametric tests are available to the researcher based upon the type of data
that is available. Interval and ratio data may only be used for the more robust
parametric tests, which involve parameters such as means, proportions, and
variances. Certain assumptions such as normality and equal variances must be
met.  Nonparametric tests must be
used when only nominal or ordinal data is available. These tests lack
statistical robustness, require no assumptions, and assess population
distributions, instead of parameters.
Cooper and Schindler report a professional debate regarding Likert
scales collecting either ordinal or interval–based data.  Within this research, the applicable leadership
assessment is the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ).  Avolio and Bass (2004) validated the MLQ's
Likert scales as interval data.
Interval versus ordinal data provides researchers the advantage of more
statistically robust data analysis.
Within the MLQ, the Likert scales are: 0=Not at all, 1= Once in a while,
2= Sometimes, 3= Fairly often, 4= Frequently, if not always.

To
measure vertical leadership effectiveness, the MLQ short form evaluates nine
factors, containing 45 items evaluated along the given Likert scale.  The measured factors are categorized within
three major styles of leadership: transformational, transactional, and passive
avoidant.  Transformational
leadership is measured along five factors: Idealized Attributes (IA), Idealized
Behaviors (IB), Inspirational Motivation (IM), Intellectual Stimulation (IS),
and Individual Consideration (IC).
Transactional leadership, associated with behaviors of constructive and
corrective transactions, is measured along the factors of Contingent Reward
(CR) and Management-by-Exception: Active (MBEA).  Transactional leadership, though
necessary, is insufficient to sustain leadership effectiveness (Avolio &
Bass, 2004).  Passive / Avoidant
Behavior, which is undesirable, but often present in ineffective leadership, is
measured along the factors of Management-by-Exception: Passive (MBEP) and
Laissez-Faire (LF).  Bass and Avolio
(p. 107-108) cite examples of the measured factor statements:

IA-Goes
beyond self-interest for the good of the group

IB-Specifies
the importance of having a strong sense of purpose

IM-Talks
enthusiastically about what needs to be accomplished

IS-Seeks
differing perspectives when solving problems

IC-Treats
me as an individual rather than just as a member of a group

CR-Expresses
satisfaction when I meet expectations

MBEA-Concentrates
full attention on dealing with mistakes, complaints, failures

MBEP-Demonstrates
that problems must become chronic before taking action

LF-Delays
in responding to urgent questions

To
measure shared leadership, a similar instrument, the Team Multifactor Leadership
Questionnaire (TMLQ) (Avolio, Sivasubramaniam, Murry, Jung, & Garger,
2003), will be used to define and measure the variables of shared
leadership.  Validation studies have
been reported for the TMLQ (Bass & Avolio, 1996; Avolio, et al.).  This modification of the MLQ measures
overall leadership possessed by the group, again within the areas of
transformational, transactional, and passive/avoidant behavior.

Additional
survey-based questions measure the other influential variables, not included in
the TMLQ, but believed to influence the emergence of shared leadership.  The group potency construct, validated
by Guzzo, et al (1993), is used in this study as a measure of group potency.  The team demographic variables of team
size, team maturity, member familiarity, member proximity, and team membership
load are simple constructs with simple scale metrics.

Validity

The
assumptions of the analytical approach are that all behavior is quantifiable
and measurable, variables may be controlled or removed from the research study,
and the researcher is objective and does not affect the results of the
study.  The overall research
methodology seeks to control these assumptions.  One important way that is accomplished
is by ensuring the validity of the data collection and analysis processes.  A strength of the quantitative,
analytical approach is its ability to be scientifically scrutinized, since a
fundamental concept of this approach is repeatability.  Statistical procedures and relevance may
be readily applied.  Another
strength is its wide acceptance in academia and in business among professionals
accustomed to the scientific method, such as engineers, social scientists, and
mathematicians.  Potential
disadvantages are the difficulty in constructing research methods which
reliably separate unwanted variables from affecting the data and resulting
conclusions.

Robson
(2002) reminds us of some of the difficulties with building validity and
reliability with fixed design research. The experimenter effect, whereby the
beliefs, values, and expectations, introduces bias.  Though Robson argues that participant
error, participant bias, observer error, and observer bias make true
reliability challenging at best, the ability to statistically demonstrate
reliability within fixed design variables is an advantage.  Robson (2002) cites several threats to
achieving internal validity, which is the ability to demonstrate causal
relationships through the data.  He
further cites Maxwell (1992), suggesting that fixed, positivist approaches to
achieve predictability through internal validity is so flawed as to be
unimportant.

A critical realist assumption is that all methods are
fallible: 'a realist conception of validity…sees the validity of an
account as inherent, not in the procedures used to produce invalidated, but in
its relationships of those things that it is intended to be an account of' (p.
106).  He is further critical of
fixed designs' attempt to attain external validity, or generalizability.  The research findings may be specific to
the group that is selected, the setting in which they are studied, the history
that is specific and unique to that group, and the constructs that are used to
study the group may be flawed (Robson).

The
data collection and analysis methodology of quantitative studies are
questionnaires.  Robson's (2002)
favorable assessment of questionnaire-based surveys are that they provide a
straightforward approach, collect readily generalized data, may be standardized,
are readily accessible from a large sample, are efficient, and allow
anonymity.  As Robson states,
measurement scales are commonly used to assess, "usually quantitatively,
the individual's performance or standing on the attribute in question" (p.
292).  When a scale is arbitrary or
measuring attitude, the measurement of opinion, belief or value is clearly
qualitative.  However, Robson
purports that systematic procedures may be used to build internal reliability
and validity, necessary for quantitative measurement.  The most commonly used scale is the
summated rating or Likert scale.
These measurement scales are generally designed with a set of positive
or negative statements whereby a respondent evaluates statements on a 5, 7, or
9-point scale.  These scales are
anchored with responses, such as, strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree,
strongly disagree.  Within
quantitative designs, Robson advises that "fixed-alternative responses
should be accurate, exhaustive, mutually exclusive and on a single
dimension" (p. 244) when constructing survey questions and possible fixed
response alternatives.  The MLQ and
TMLQ survey questions are constructed along a single dimension and fit the
above criteria.

Multifactor
Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) Validity/Reliability

The
Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) is based upon the transformative
leadership work of Burns (1978) and has been refined over the years by Avolio
and Bass (2004).  The current MLQ
Form 5X "has been used in nearly 300 research programs, doctoral
dissertations and masters theses around the globe in nearly 10 years between
1995 and 2004" (Avolio & Bass, p. 35).  The most recent construct validation of
the MLQ by Avolio and Bass demonstrates confirmatory factor analyses within
acceptable limits in support of a nine factor model for MLQ Form 5X.  Confirmatory factor analysis is widely
used to test the construct validity of instruments (Avolio & Bass).  High, positive intercorrelations,
averaging .64, were achieved among the five transformational factors of
Idealized Attributes (IA), Idealized Behaviors (IB), Inspirational Motivation
(IM), Intellectual Stimulation (IS), and Individual Consideration (IC).  See Table 1 for sample items found in
the transformational factors.  Due
to copyright law, only a limited number of items may be included in this dissertation
and have been used with the permission of Mind Garden, Inc. at www.mindgarden.com.
The transactional leadership factor
of Contingent Reward (CR) associated with behaviors of constructive and
corrective transactions, achieved high correlation when compared with the
transformational construct.  This factor
as well as the other transactional items may be found in Table 2.  Avolio and Bass explain both leadership
forms to be positive and necessary for leadership effectiveness.  The Contingent Reward factor is consistent
with building "trust, dependability, and perceptions of consistency with
leaders among followers, which are a basis for transformational
leadership" (p. 71).  Avolio
and Bass further report that the active corrective transactional leadership,
Management-by-Exception: Active (MBEA), "exhibited neither low positive or
negative correlations with the transformational and a constructive form of
transactional leadership (CR).

Table 1

Multifactor
Leadership Questionnaire- Sample Transformational Items by Factor

Items By Transformational Factor

Idealized
Attributes (IA)

Goes beyond
self-interest for the good of the group

Idealized
Behaviors (IB)

Emphasizes the
importance of having a collective sense of mission

Inspirational
Motivation (IM)

Expresses confidence
that goals will be achieved

Intellectual Stimulation (IS)

Seeks differing
perspectives when solving problems

Intellectual
Consideration (IC)

Helps me to develop
my strengths

Table 2

Multifactor
Leadership Questionnaire- Sample Transactional Items by Factor

Items By Transactional Factor

Contingent
Reward (CR)

Makes clear what one
can expect to receive when performance goals are achieved

Management-by-Exception:
Active (MBEA)

Focuses attention on
irregularities, mistakes, exceptions, and deviations from standards

MBEA
also positively correlated with its more passive and corrective form (MBEP) and
inactive laissez-faire leadership ratings" (2004, p. 71).  These Passive/Avoidant items may be
found in Table 3.  The MLQ also
includes nine Outcomes of Leadership items, collated within Extra Effort,
Effectiveness, and Satisfaction with Leadership. (See Table 4.)  The overall Goodness of Fit measure for
the full nine-factor model was a .92.   Reliability scores (Cronbach
alphas) were reported within acceptable limits for all MLQ factors, including
transformational, transactional, passive/avoidant behaviors, and outcomes of
leadership.  These scores ranged
from a low of .69 for the transactional leadership factor of Contingent Reward
(CR) to a high of .83 for the transformational leadership factor of
Inspirational Motivation (IM) and the outcomes of leadership factor of Extra
Effort (EE).

Table 3

Multifactor
Leadership Questionnaire- Sample Passive/Avoidant Behavior Items by Factor

Items By Passive/Avoidant Behavior Factor

Management-by-Exception:
Passive (MBEP)

Waits for things to
go wrong before taking action

Laissez-Faire
(LF)

Avoids getting
involved when important issues arise

Table 4

Multifactor
Leadership Questionnaire- Sample Outcomes of Leadership Items

Items By Outcomes of Leadership

Extra
Effort (EE)

Increases my
willingness to try harder

Effectiveness
(EFF)

Is effective in
meeting organizational requirements

Satisfaction
(SAT)

Uses methods of
leadership that are satisfying

Multifactor
Leadership Questionnaire for Teams (TMLQ) Validity/Reliability

The
Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire for Teams (TMLQ) is based upon the
similar, Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) (Bass & Avolio,
1996).  The original construct of
the TMLQ was essentially similar in all factors as the MLQ and is represented
in Tables 5, 6, 7, and 8.
Another, more recent validation study for the TMLQ by Avolio,
Sivasubramaniam, and Murry (2000), confirmed a five-factor model for
measuring leadership within teams, held and displayed at the collective
level.  Unlike the validation of
the MLQ Form 5X that confirmed a nine-factor model (Avolio & Bass, 2004),
Avolio, et al. validated a five-factor model using confirmatory factor
analysis.  "The first three
scales, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individual
consideration, represented team transformational leadership. The fourth
factor represented management-by-exception-active leadership, and the fifth
dimension was avoidant/laissez-faire leadership" (Avolio, et al., p.
11).

The
scale reliabilities were found to be at or above minimum standards for
correlations for all scales.  The
transformational leadership factors had scale reliabilities of .84 for
inspirational motivation, .79 for intellectual stimulation, and .80 for
individual consideration. The reliability for the management-by-exception-active
scale was .61, which was only "marginally acceptable in terms of
reliability" (p. 12).  The
passive avoidant scale reliability was .87, which was well above the minimum
standard.  Though the validation
study confirmed only five factors, it is important to note that the original
TMLQ's specific items still maintain the identity of all nine factors found
within the MLQ, upon which the TMLQ is based.

In
a more recent validation study of the TMLQ, two additional sample populations, one
student and one army platoon, were added to the earlier student sample.   The three population samples were
used to construct and validate the shared leadership assessment for the purpose
of future shared leadership research (Avolio, Sivasubramaniam, Murry,
Jung, & Garger, 2003).

Table 5

Multifactor
Leadership Questionnaire for Teams- Sample Transformational Items by Factor

Items By Transformational Factor

Idealized
Attributes

Display confidence
in each other

Idealized
Behaviors

Emphasize the
importance of having a collective sense of mission

Inspirational
Motivation

Talk
enthusiastically about our work

Intellectual Stimulation

Seek a broad
range of perspectives when solving problems

Individualized
Consideration

Listen
attentively to each other's concerns

Table 6

Multifactor
Leadership Questionnaire for Teams- Sample Transactional Items by Factor

Items By Transactional Factor

Contingent
Reward (CR)

Work out
agreements about what's expected from each other

Management-by-Exception:
Active (MBEA)

Focus
attention on irregularities, mistakes, exceptions, and deviations from
standards

Table 7

Multifactor
Leadership Questionnaire for Teams- Sample Passive/Avoidant Behavior Items by
Factor

Items By Passive/Avoidant Behavior Factor

Management-by-Exception:
Passive (MBEP)

Allow
performance to fall below minimum standards before trying to make
improvements

Laissez-Faire
(LF)

Avoid
addressing problems

Table 8

Multifactor
Leadership Questionnaire- Sample Outcomes of Leadership Items

Items
By Outcomes of Shared Leadership

Extra
Effort

Motivate each
other to do more than they thought they could do

Effectiveness

The overall
effectiveness of the team can be classified as:

Satisfaction

In all, how
satisfied are you with the leadership abilities of the team that you are
rating?

In
the creation of the TMLQ assessment, the original TMLQ items were factor loaded
according to two criteria for considering each item as representative of a
factor: "a factor loading of greater than .45 (Gorsuch, 1983) and item
cross loading on other factors that were no greater than .3" (Avolio, Sivasubramaniam, Murry, Jung, & Garger,
2003. p. 153).  This validation
study again confirmed a best fit model of five factors, some of which contain a
blend of items from the original instrument.  This five-factor model achieved the
highest comparative fit index (CFI) scores of .882, .957, and .879 for all
three population samples when compared with other multiple-factor models.  The five factors are Intellectual
Stimulation (IS-4 items), Inspiring Leadership (IL-5 items), and Individualized
Consideration (IC-5 items), Management-by-Exception-Active (MBEA-4 items), and
Passive Avoidant Leadership (PA-5 items).
The transformational factors of IS, IL, and IC were significantly and positively
correlated with correlation coefficients between .545 and .716.  These transformational factors were each
negatively correlated (or nearly so) with the transactional factor of MBEA with
values of IL (-.059), IS (.060), and IC (-.223).  They were also negatively correlated
with the passive avoidant (PA) factor with values of IL (-.203), IS (-.493),
and IC (-.553).  MBEA and PA were
significantly positively correlated with a value of .385.  Among the most significant blending of
items is the creation of the Individualized Consideration (IC) factor.  The IC factor is actually an assessment
comprised of three items from the original Contingent Reward (CR) factor and
two items retained from the IC factors.
In all, 23 items were retained from the original TMLQ's 45 items
collated with nine factors (Bass & Avolio, 1996).  In removing these contingent reward
items from those factors considered transactional, the remaining transactional
factors of MBEA and PA represent a stronger controlling style of
leadership.  This shorter research
version of the TMLQ will be used to assess shared leadership since it
represents the best available validity at the time of this research.  Table 9 identifies sample items of the
five-factor research version of the TMLQ model.

Table 9

Multifactor
Leadership Questionnaire for Teams (Research Version) Sample Items by Factor

Items By Factor (Original TMLQ Factor)

Inspiring Leadership (IL)

Encourage each
other to rethink ideas which had never been questioned before (IS)

Focus on
developing each other's strengths (IC)

Recognized
member and/or team accomplishments (CR)

Intellectual Stimulation (IS)

Seek a broad
range of perspectives when solving problems (IS)

Provide useful
advice for each other's development (IC)

Individualized Consideration (IC)

Work out
agreements about what's expected from each other (CR)

Listen
attentively to each other's concerns (IC)

Management-by-Exception-Active
(MBEA)

Focus
attention on irregularities, mistakes, exceptions, deviations from
standards

(MBEA)

Tell each
other what they've done wrong rather than what they've done right (MBEP)

Passive/Avoidant
Leadership (PA)

Allow
performance to fall below minimum standards before trying to make
improvements

(MBEP)

Avoid
addressing problems (LF)

Avolio,
Sivasubramaniam, Murry, Jung, and Garger (2003) caution against a blanket
application of the TMLQ as the definitive measure of shared leadership for all
teams.  Specifically, they noted that
the MBEA factor, found only marginally acceptable as a reliable factor with
Bass and Avolio's (1996) original TMLQ validation study, improved its
reliability equal to the other TMLQ factors, when the targeted teams had more
than one month experience together.
They recommend that the teams involved in shared leadership research
have team maturity greater than one month, and the level of complexity in their
work that exceeded the relatively simple work structures that were represented
by the teams within the validation studies.  The targeted integrated product teams of
this research satisfy these recommendations for both maturity and work
complexity.  It will also be important
to track the contingent reward items, since they represent a crossover from
transactional to transformational style of leadership within the TMLQ.  Since Avolio and Bass (2004) experienced
a similar challenge of blending some of the CR factor items from transactional
to transformational, it will be important to track some of these CR items when
comparing vertical leadership via the MLQ and shared leadership via the TMLQ.

Group Potency
Questionnaire Validity

Group
potency, a collective construct, is the collective belief within a team that it
can be effective (Guzzo, et al, 1993; Bligh, Pearce, & Kohles,
2006).  Guzzo,
et al. developed and validated an eight question group potency assessment with
an internal consistency reliability of .88.  These eight assessment items, measured
along a five-point Likert scale, are used within this research to measure group
potency.  This group-centered construct
has been widely accepted and used in group potency research.  The eight items are represented in Table
10.

Table 10

Group potency
Questionnaire

Questionnaire Item Description

This
team has confidence in itself.

This
team believes it can become unusually good at producing high quality work.

This
team expects to be known as a high-performing team.

This
team feels it can solve any problem it encounters.

This
team believes it can be very productive.

This
team can get a lot done when it works hard.

No task
is too tough for this team.

This
team expects to have a lot of influence around here.

Common Source Bias

Another
potential issue that is of concern is common source bias from self-report data,
which may result in estimate inflation.
There has been some concern that self-report questionnaire methods,
"if used as the sole means of data collection, artificially elevate
measures of covariation, producing percept–percept inflation in published
correlations" (Crampton & Wagner, 1994, p. 72).  However, the overall condemnation of
self-report data may be unwarranted.
"…Our results suggest that percept–percept inflation
may be more the exception than the rule in microresearch on organizations"
(Crampton & Wagner, p. 72).
Crampton and Wagner found external, observation-based phenomenon
involving perceptions of job involvement, organizational culture, and
organizational structure appear free of self-report estimate inflation.

The
original construct of the MLQ was validated using multiple rater sources and
therefore, it may be argued that common source bias might be an issue without
assessing multiple perspectives of vertical leadership style.  Other researchers have addressed this
concern with common source bias within the method of MLQ data collection.
"Common source bias concerns prompted supplementation of self-report data
on perceived leadership style…by upper-level managers' (those who oversee
the same superiors assessed by the subordinates) responses to the same set of
MLQ items" (Madzar, 2001).  Despite
this, "It remains unclear whether percept–percept inflation can be
legitimately attributed to self-report methods" (Crampton & Wagner,
1994, p. 73).  To address any extant
common source bias concern, team member, team leader, and upper-level manager
data will be used to assess multiple perspectives of vertical leadership style
with the MLQ.

The
original construct and validation of the TMLQ used self-report, team member
data from student teams and army platoons (Avolio,
Sivasubramaniam, & Murry, 2000; Avolio, Sivasubramaniam, Murry,
Jung, & Garger, 2003).  Given
that the validation study of the TMLQ was conducted with self-report data and
that the measured perspectives are external and observation-based, concern for common
source bias may be somewhat mitigated (Crampton & Wagner, 1994).  Self-reported measurement of team
demographic data has been shown to be free of common source data bias (Crampton
& Wagner).  Therefore, there is little
concern for introducing estimate inflation when assessing team demographic data
within this research.

Instrumentation Level
of Analysis

Within
this shared leadership research, there are multiple levels of focal constructs assessed
by the instrument questions.  Chan
(1998) encouraged researchers to be aware of the level of analysis that is
unique to each theoretical construct.  Researchers need to communicate at the
same level along a "conceptual framework for developing and validating new
focal constructs and multilevel theories" (Chan, p. 235).  Chan's typology of five basic forms of
composition models are: "(a) additive, (b) direct consensus, (c)
referent-shift consensus, (d) dispersion, and (e) process composition" (p.
235).   Simplifying this typology, Avolio,
Sivasubramaniam, and Murry (2000) identified a "multi-level framework of
leadership measurement" consisting of four levels (p.7).

Within
this research, the assessment of team demographics is, for the most part, an
individual's assessment of facts concerning the team.  For example, the team's size, maturity,
and proximity may be readily answered by the team leader.  Team member familiarity and team
membership load are individual perceptions about themselves within the
team.  This measurement scheme for
team demography appropriately "represents an additive model where
individual perceptions…are averaged or aggregated to develop an
index…" (Avolio, Sivasubramaniam, &
Murry, 2000, p. 8).  This is
synonymous to Chan's (1998) additive model, where the simple sum of the
individual, lower level variables are averaged to represent the higher level
value through calculation of the mean.
To assess team demographics, self-report data collection from the team
leader and/or members will appropriately represent the individual rater level
of analysis (Crampton & Wagner, 1994; Chan;
Avolio, et al.).

The
calculation of vertical leadership style via the MLQ examines the common
perceptions from team members of one individual's leadership of the team.  According to Chan (1998) and Avolio,
Sivasubramaniam, and Murry (2000), the appropriate level of analysis and
typology is direct consensus.  Since
the assessment of vertical leadership is derived from the agreement of the
followers, summation and "within-group agreement is considered adequate
evidence to aggregate individual ratings of the leader" (Avolio, et al., p. 8).
A simple summation and within-group agreement calculation of the data
responses of the different rater groups of vertical leader, team members, and
senior-level managers suffices and has clear precedence (Chan; Avolio, et al.) .

Both
assessments of shared leadership and group potency represent "a
referent-shift consensus model (Chan, 1998) in that respondents are asked to
shift the referent from an individual to a collective, and evidence for
escalation to a higher level is provided by within-group agreement.  Chan provides a lengthy discussion,
comparing the individual model of self-potency that is referent-shifted to a
new, collective construct of group potency.  A similar argument may be made for the
measurement of the collective construct of shared leadership via the TMLQ,
which is a referent-shift from the individual construct of vertical leadership
via the MLQ.  Chan argues that a team
member may not individually possess the qualities of the individual-level
measured construct, and yet, he or she may assess a great degree of the
group-level form of the construct as possessed by the collective group.  To appropriately assess for group potency
and shared leadership, the referent-shift consensus within a group can be
measured via calculation of within group agreement (James, Demaree,
& Wolf, 1984).  This test is used to justify the
aggregation of individual respondents into a collective construct, necessary
for measuring shared leadership and group potency.  Validation of the collective construct
may be attained by measuring intracorrelation coefficients (ICC) to determine
interdependence and whether there is a group-level effect upon the variable of
interest (Bliese, 2000; de Jong, de Ruyter, & Wetzels, 2005).

Pilot Testing

Though
the MLQ and TMLQ are validated surveys, organizations may have their own unique
interpretations of survey questions and reactions to surveys.  The target organization for this
research, being high-tech, prefers to complete surveys that are web-based (P.
Sakitis, personal communication, October 25, 2007).  For this reason, the surveys will be
administered online, using a web-based service that specializes in the self-design
and administration of online surveys (Survey Monkey, n.d.).  Though there is an online version of the
MLQ, no such online data collection method is available for the TMLQ, the group
potency questionnaire, or the specific team demographic variables.  The shortened, 23-item research version
of the TMLQ is not available in any form from the author.  For this reason, and to minimize the
time and steps necessary for team members to complete all of the surveys, all
necessary survey questions have been consolidated within one web-based shared
leadership survey.  All question
items have been previously validated, though some wording may be ambiguous or
misinterpreted by this specific target sample.  It is anticipated that intracorrelation
reliabilities will be determined during the pilot study as well.  The online survey process may also have
design flaws that a pilot test sample might identify as needing
improvement.

A
pilot test of three teams from the target organization will be used to
determine any data collection design flaws or unforeseen sampling issues.  One such potential issue may be that the
target organization does not include team members that are geographically
dispersed (P. Sakitis, personal communication, October 25, 2007).  If the pilot confirms this, the
independent team demographic variable of team proximity may be dropped from the
survey and the research altogether.
Additionally, it is strategically necessary to include in the pilot, a
key leader in the organization and member of an active IPCT with many IPT's
reporting into his IPCT.  His participation
in the study should help gain the necessary leadership support and commitment for
the study (Dew, 1995; Rabby, 2001).
A request for permission to use his organization in this study is
essential.  This
support will be necessary to reach the maximum number of sample teams necessary
for participation in the study.   Additional support for the overall
research as well as ensuring face validity of the assessment may be gained via post
survey interviews.  This additional
qualitative data may uncover unforeseen content face validity and process
issues inherent within the data collection process.

Data Collection

Following
the pilot test and having gained the key IPCT leader's support, it is anticipated
that the maximum number of sample teams will be accessible to participate in
the survey.  This will not only
increase the number of teams, but will also increase the participation rate of
team members responding to the survey.
Furthermore, given a successful pilot test, additional IPCT leaders may
wish to be included.

Invitation to
Participate

Having
gained permission of the target organization's key leader to participate in the
pilot and successive distribution of the survey, a scan of the organization's
organizational chart, should reveal the most active IPCT's and IPT's team
leaders.  A letter from the
organizational leader will encourage these team leaders to participate in the
web-based shared leadership survey.
Given the organization's current strategic development focus on building
effective team leadership, teams, and teamwork, the data collected for this
research should provide important insights into the progress and future
direction for this organizational initiative.   All that is necessary for the team
leaders' initial participation is to include a letter inviting participation by
the researcher and a Web link to the online survey.  A list of team leaders, their e-mail
addresses, and a unique team leader identification number, will be compiled by
the organizational contact for the purpose of follow-up to ensure maximum
participation.  Each team leader
will be asked to distribute the Web link and their unique team leader
identification number, so that the team membership data can be compiled by
team.  This is important, since the
study of shared leadership is a collective construct, not an individual one. It
is also important to maintain the identity of the team leader so that this
independent variable's effect upon the emergence of shared leadership within their
team can be identified.

The
web-based survey application has the capability of recording the individual
survey data collected, collated by team leader identification number.  The tallied responses may then be
entered automatically into an Excel spreadsheet.  This Excel format can be exported to the
SPSS statistical processing software for data analysis.  The pilot test should reveal any data
importing glitches from each survey or exporting issues into SPSS.

Ethical Considerations

As
a researcher, one's major role is to become a creator of knowledge.  A desired outcome of this role is
"to mean a conscious individual doing research, or involved in consulting
or in any kind of development of new knowledge when that development is at its
best" (Arbnor & Bjerke, 1997, p. 4).  Being at one's best in research requires
a full understanding of the beliefs, assumptions, and interests that shape
one's paradigm.  These paradigms
formulate a researcher's view of the important principles, practices, and
roles, as well as, the diagnosis and interpreted meaning of observations made
about the research target.  To
sustain the drive and passion necessary to conduct this research, it is
important to be guided by clear principles.  These same principles, however, must
include the assurance that objectivity is maintained throughout the
research.  Without objectivity, the
ethical principles that ensure the validity of the research and more
importantly, the safety of the participants may be compromised.

The
study of shared leadership is deeply rooted in the principles and practices of
organization development (OD).
Deaner (1994) asserts that the effective practice of OD should be based
upon principles that guide behaviors within research.  Some of the principles of OD include the
effective use of human resources through acts of participation, employee
involvement, empowerment, collaboration, openness, authenticity, employee
influence upon organizational direction, respect, and honesty.  These are heavily influenced by the
ethical values of utilitarianism.
One of the underpinnings of OD is the act of harnessing the power of the
full organization for its mutual benefit.
A full understanding of these principles is important because it may
influence the researcher's objectivity in the research design, data collection
and analysis of the shared leadership study.  The practice of shared leadership
embraces all of the aforementioned principles as well as those deemed critical
to the practice of OD: participation, shared power, and truth (Deaner).

These
same principles, however, guide and ensure the objectivity of the planned
shared leadership research.
Employees' sense of involvement and control over their destiny should be
fostered throughout the implementation of the research.  "The voluntary nature of the
participation respects individual free will" (Deaner, 2004, p. 437).  Every research participant will be
invited, but not be required, to participate.  No research participant should perceive either
reward nor sanction for their agreement or refusal to participate.

Evident
of Kantian ethics and supported by OD principles throughout the research, the
targeted teams need to be treated as the end, not the means to the end.  Deaner (1994) suggests that congruent
with these principles, the research should move the organization towards higher
levels of employee involvement, as well as seeking the opinions of all those
knowledgeable in the organization.
Relative to this research, this would require team members' involvement
and decision-making in assessing the current state of the organization.  This may be reached through open
communication about the study as well as the use of valid and reliable instrumentation.  In support of truthful behavior
throughout the research, the researcher "would advocate such disclosures,
provide accurate information about qualifications, and disclose perceptions of
project results" (p. 442).
Clear contracting with the target organization needs to occur to ensure
that all collected data will remain anonymous and confidential.  This assurance must be communicated
prior to the beginning of data collection.
Since the research involves a team leadership assessment, it is
important to maintain the anonymity and confidentiality of each team leader
throughout the research.  To this
end, team leaders' identity to remain anonymous and tracked through a team
leader identification number.  This
is necessary to collect and collate the data by team, a step that is integral
to the study of shared leadership.
To protect the confidentiality of the team leader and their respective
teams, the individual leaders' data will not be released to the
organization.  No one in the
organization, including the human resources department, owns the individual
data.  The difficulty that some
researchers might experience in maintaining anonymity may be better managed if
the researcher funds the project.  For
this reason, the research will be wholly funded by the researcher.  Since this research is fully funded by
the researcher, this and other ethical issues regarding the preservation of
anonymity should be readily managed.

In
order to win leadership support for the research project, the leader should
have some expectation for a benefit to the organization.  This is understandable and supports the
need to clearly contract for the details of a post-research report.  In order to maintain the highest ethical
standards and still gain leadership support, the organization will receive an
executive summary, including a roll-up of the data analysis, if desired.  No individual team leaders and teams
will be able to be identified within this data, since no team leader names or
numbers will be included in this report.
It is anticipated that a set of recommendations for enhancing team or
shared leadership may be included as a follow-up for this organization.  That should satisfy the organization's
need for a tangible benefit for participation without comprising any research
ethics.

Data
Display and Analysis

Most
of the data collection and analysis that needs to be displayed within the
research of shared leadership will involve quantitative analysis from two
primary instruments, the MLQ and the TMLQ.   Through the instruments' design, items
are measured via the Likert scale, and organized within factors.  At the factor level, across instruments,
correlation coefficients will need to be calculated and displayed in
tables.  Shared leadership studies
of Pearce (1997) and Wood (2004) highlighted significant correlations within
tables to demonstrate support of stated hypotheses.  Additionally, survey samples within explanatory
tables of the factors and the supportive item relationships are displayed.  Descriptive statistics are generally
displayed within simple, SPSS-generated tables and charts.  Pearce (1997) and Wood (2004) used
regression analysis to show causal relationships among dimensions.  To manage the complexity, path analysis flow
diagrams, generated through structural equation modeling (SEM) software helped visualize
the direction and strength of the relationships.  Correlation coefficients were placed adjacent
to the connecting, directional arrows.
This path model may be facilitated through Analysis of Moment Structures
(AMOS) software.  This software,
when used with SPSS, enables an understanding for the likely directional
relationship paths among multiple variables.  AMOS also allows for a more comprehensive
examination of the model as a whole.
The directional relationships, or path, among vertical leadership,
shared leadership, and group potency is best explored with the combination of
multiple regression analysis and path analysis.  An example of the style of diagram and likely
directional path between key variables is shown in Figure 1.

The
vertical team leadership data may be obtained through the MLQ.  The shorter research version of the MLQ
increases this instrument's practicality.
Using frequency-based Likert scales, demonstrated behaviors are
organized within factors as independent variables.  In order to test the null hypothesis
that several independent population means are equal, which in the assessment of
vertical leadership style, they should not, the analysis of variance (ANOVA)
test must be conducted.  It is
important to satisfy the assumptions of independent random samples, normally
distributed populations, and equal population variances.  The latter is accomplished by
calculating and comparing within-group and between-group variability of the
means, known as the F Ratio (Norusis, 2003).

Shared
leadership data, assessed through the TMLQ, is essentially similar to the vertical
leadership MLQ assessment.  Using
the same Likert scales as in the MLQ, each of the TMLQ factors are assumed
dependent variables (Pearce, 1997).
The major difference of the TMLQ is the level of analysis within the
typology of composition (Chan, 1998).  Shared leadership, measured at the collective,
group level via the TMLQ, not the individual level, is assessed by each team
member with the entire collective team as the "referent shift
consensus" (Chan, p. 235).  To
validate this group level construct, it is necessary to measure and confirm within-group
agreement (James, Demaree, & Wolf, 1984).  "Within group consensus is used to
justify aggregation of individuals' perceptions of collective leadership to
represent the value of the higher-level construct…" (Avolio,
Sivasubramaniam, & Murry, 2000. p. 22).  Acceptable agreement index values of Cronbach
Alphas of .7 are generally necessary to demonstrate high consistency in ratings
among team members within groups and justify aggregation from an individual to
a group level construct (Avolio, Sivasubramaniam, & Murry, 2000).  Additionally, the intraclass correlation
coefficient (ICC(1)), based upon the ANOVA, and essentially similar ICC(2),
which accounts for group size, is used to determine interdependence and whether
there is a group-level effect upon the variable of interest (Bliese, 2000; de
Jong, de Ruyter, & Wetzels, 2005).

Group
potency (Guzzo, et al, 1993; Bligh, Pearce, & Kohles, 2006), another
collective, referent shift consensus measure (Chan, 1998, p. 235), is
hypothesized to be positively related with certain styles of both vertical and
shared leadership.  Group potency may
be a dependent variable for vertical leadership and either an independent or a
dependent variable for shared leadership.
This has been demonstrated in part by Pearce (1997) and Avolio, Sivasubramaniam, and Murry (2000).  Similar to the shared leadership
construct, measured via the TMLQ, group potency must be confirmed to be a group
level construct, by validating within-group agreement via analysis of variance
of the within and between group means (ANOVA) and intraclass correlation
coefficients.

In
addition to multiple regression analysis to determine the relationships between
group potency and vertical and shared leadership, path analysis, using AMOS,
should confirm or negate the directional path of these relationships as shown
in Figure 1.

Figure 1.
Directional Path of Hypothesized Variables

The
independent team demographic variables of team size, team maturity, member
familiarity, member proximity, and team membership load are measured via an
add-on survey to the MLQ and TMLQ.

The
quantitative analysis of the research involves multivariate analysis,
specifically, multiple regression analysis.  Assuming Likert data as interval, as
with prior cited shared leadership research, multiple regression analysis is
possible for the data analysis of all hypotheses.  Since there is some ambiguity for the
direction of influence between group potency and shared leadership (hypothesis
#4), path analysis should help to determine a likely relationship path. It is
reasonable to project that vertical leadership predicts group potency as
opposed to the reverse, as has been confirmed in prior research (Pearce, 1997).  Again, the tested hypotheses are:

Hypotheses
1.  There is a statistically
significant positive relationship between transformational vertical leadership
with the development of team members' shared leadership.

Hypotheses
2.  There is a statistically
significant positive relationship between transactional contingent reward
vertical leadership with the development of team members' shared leadership.

Hypotheses
3a.  There is a statistically
significant positive relationship between the team demographic variables of
team maturity, familiarity, and proximity with the development of shared
leadership.

Hypotheses
3b.  There is a statistically significant
negative relationship between the team demographic variables of team size and
team membership load with the development of shared leadership.

Hypothesis
4a:  There is a statistically
significant positive relationship between transformational vertical leadership
with group potency.

Hypothesis
4b:  There is a statistically
significant positive relationship between transactional contingent reward
vertical leadership with group potency.

Hypothesis
4c:  There is a statistically
significant positive relationship between shared leadership with group potency.

Table
11 summarizes the independent, dependent variables, and the anticipated data
analysis statistical tests.

Table 11

Data Analysis
– Statistical Test by Hypothesis

Hypo #              Independent
Variable
Dependent
Variable
Statistical Tests

1
Transformational VL
Shared
Leadership
ANOVA

2
Transactional VL
Shared Leadership
ICC

3
Team Size                            Shared
Leadership
Multiple
Regression

3
Team Maturity                     Shared Leadership
AMOS

3
Team Familiarity
Shared
Leadership

3
Team Proximity
Shared
Leadership

3
Team Membership Load
Shared
Leadership

4
Transformational VL
Group potency

4
Transactional VL
Group potency

4
Group potency
Shared Leadership

CHAPTER 4. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS

As
stated in earlier chapters, the purpose of this study was to determine the
relationship between transformational as well as transactional vertical
leadership styles with the development of shared leadership.  It further sought to understand the
relationships between team demographic variables of team size, maturity,
proximity, familiarity, and team membership load and the development of shared
leadership.  Finally, it explored
the relationship between vertical and shared leadership with group
potency.

Data Collection

The
anticipated sample size, for collecting research data within this segment of
the organization, was 50 teams.  The
potential disruption caused by surveying an entire organizational segment had
been identified as a potential risk.
The workload of the teams, coupled with the voluntary nature of
participation in the study, resulted in a data sample of 33 teams.  Following within-group agreement analysis
to validate the teams’ perceived convergence of their shared leadership
observations, 31 teams reached the intraclass correlation test threshold of .7,
or nearly so, as recommended by James, et al. (1984).  Though this sample was smaller than
anticipated, it is reflective of the workload of technical teams, not the level
of commitment to the study.  It is
important to note that these teams were selected for their high activity level
at the current stage of the product life cycle.  Further, the use of 31 teams is well
within the data sample size of similar shared leadership research.  Avolio, et al. (2003) used similar sample
sizes of 35 student teams in one study and 28 Army platoon teams in
another.  These were the usable
sample sizes following within-group agreement analysis.  Each team in this present study was
comprised of 4 to 18 members, including the team leader, with most teams having
less than 10 members.  Since it was neither
expected nor necessary to sample all team members within each team, 155
responses were collected, with each team assessed by 4-7 members, including
leaders.

A
pilot “trial run” was performed to verify the usability of the
online survey.  Two issues
surfaced.  It was necessary to
create specific and unique online survey collectors to maintain the identity of
each team.  Otherwise, it would not
have been possible to identify the collective constructs of shared leadership
and group potency.  This created additional
administrative steps, however, without it, full data analysis would have been impossible.  Another issue that surfaced was the need
to use a Likert scale to measure team maturity.  Initially, maturity data was collected
in the form of months spent on the team.
Given the nature of the teams, team members’ maturity varied
widely.  Some new members were on
the team for two months, while some others had 48 months of seniority.  Measuring maturity by months on the team
would have allowed these outliers to skew the data, so a new scale was
devised.  The new duration scale was
created to encompass both the newest and the most experienced members:  1) less than 6 months; 2) 6 months
– 1 year; 3) greater than 1 year – 2 years; 4) greater than 2 years
– 3 years; 5) greater than 3 years.
The nature of the teams proved that team member movement in and out of
the team, coupled with assessing only a sample of team members, created some
unforeseen issues with the research utility of the duration variable.

Data Analysis

There
are four research questions that the data presented in this chapter seeks to
address.

Research
Question 1. To what extent is transformational vertical leadership style
related to the emergence of shared leadership within a high-tech team?

Research
Question 2. To what extent is transactional vertical leadership style related
to the emergence of shared leadership within a high-tech team?

Research
Question 3. To what extent do team demographics of team size, maturity,
proximity, familiarity, and team membership load influence the development of
shared leadership within high-tech teams?

Research
Question 4. To what extent are vertical and shared leadership related to group
potency within high-tech teams?

In
order to address these research questions, this chapter presents the results of
ANOVA, multiple regression analysis, intraclass correlation coefficients,
correlations, descriptive statistics, and path analysis.  All tests were conducted at the .05
level of statistical significance.  These
tests were used to discover the relationships among the variables and to determine
the validity of the data and suitability for each test.  After such tests, acceptable data from
147 individuals within 31 teams was used.

Testing the Usability of the Vertical and Shared
Leadership Data

To
address the first two research questions, the first two hypotheses must be tested.  The first two hypotheses are:

1. There is a statistically
significant positive relationship between transformational vertical leadership
with the development of team members' shared leadership.

2.  There is a statistically significant
positive relationship between transactional contingent reward vertical leadership
with the development of team members' shared leadership.

In
order to test both of these hypotheses, regression analysis was used to
determine the linear relationships between vertical transformational and
contingent reward transactional leadership with transformational shared
leadership.  To determine which of
the team data could be used, ANOVA tests were performed for both vertical and
shared leadership data to determine whether the data represented independent
population samples. Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) were determined
to validate the collective constructs of shared transformational leadership and
group potency.

The
most important determinant for identifying the validity of the team data
involved data analysis confirming or rejecting the dependent, shared leadership
construct.  If within-group
agreement was not reached within each team, there would be no need to analyze
that team’s data further for vertical leadership or any of the other
independent variables.

Shared
leadership data was collected through the Team Multifactor Leadership Quotient
(TMLQ).  Each of the TMLQ factors was
assumed dependent variables. Since shared leadership is a collective construct
measure, it was necessary to confirm within-group agreement (James, Demaree,
& Wolf, 1984).  "Within group consensus is used to
justify aggregation of individuals' perceptions of collective leadership to
represent the value of the higher-level construct…" (Avolio,
Sivasubramaniam, & Murry, 2000. p. 22).  An argument may be made for inclusion of
the team leader’s responses with the team members’ responses, since
the measurement of the collective construct of shared leadership, via the TMLQ,
does not specifically discount the team leader from each shared leadership
survey question.  Therefore, for the
purpose of assessing the shared leadership construct, the team leader’s
data is included.  The measurement
of the shared leadership construct, being a referent-shift from the individual
construct of vertical leadership (Chan, 1998), logically supports the inclusion
of the team leader data.  Acceptable
intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) values of .7 (Cronbach alpha) determine
which teams’ shared leadership and group potency data justify aggregation
from an individual to a group level construct (Avolio, et al.).  Survey responses assessing group level
constructs, transformational shared leadership and group potency, were tested
for within-group agreement.  Since
the available sample of team members represents a larger population set of all
team members within each team, a two-way random model option was chosen
(Norusis, 2005).

Table
12 displays the ICC values for 33 teams.
Thirty of these teams reached ICC within-group threshold values of .7 or
greater.  One additional team had a
marginally acceptable value of .651 and was retained.  There is some precedence within the
shared leadership construct research for accepting a lower reliability
value.  Avolio, et al. (2000) deemed
the shared leadership management-by-exception-active scale of .61 to be
"marginally acceptable in terms of reliability" (p. 12).  In Table 12, the ICC values for Teams 2,
5, and 13 were .651 (marginally acceptable), .583, (unacceptable), and  -1.944 (unacceptable), respectively.  Since shared leadership and group
potency are collective constructs, and data from Teams 5 and 13 were suspect,
it was necessary to disqualify these two teams from the study.  Following this within-group agreement
analysis, the remaining 31 teams’ identification numbers were renumbered
from 1 to 31 to avoid confusion.

Once it had been established that all
team members, including the team leader, had experienced within-group
agreement, it was important to ensure sufficient between-group variability in
the shared leadership mean scores.  To
test this, ANOVA was used to reject the null hypothesis that several
independent population means are equal.
Table 13 displays the ANOVA results for Transformational Shared
Leadership.  The corresponding descriptive
statistics, in Appendix B, show a variance in the mean scores from a low of
1.69 in Team 20 to a high of 3.45 in Team 25.  More significantly, the ANOVA in Table 13
shows a Between Groups F-Ratio of 2.884 at a significance level of .000.  The null hypothesis that the independent
population means for 31 team’s transformational shared leadership scores
is clearly rejected.  The collective
construct of transformational shared leadership and group potency data for 31
teams may be used in the remaining analysis, in support of the recommendation
of Avolio, Sivasubramaniam, and Murry (2000).

Table 12

Intraclass Correlation
Coefficients – Shared Leadership and Team Potency

Intraclass Correlationa

95% Confidence Interval

F Test with True Value 0

Team ID (Number of Members Including
Team Leader)

Lower Bound

Upper Bound

Value

df1

df2

Sig

Team 1  (4)

.957

.928

.976

23.059

36

108

.000

Team 2  (4)

*.651

.423

.804

2.865

36

108

.000

Team 3  (4)

.946

.911

.970

18.632

36

108

.000

Team 4  (4)

.947

.913

.970

19.021

36

108

.000

Team 5  (3)

**.583

.280

.771

2.397

36

108

.000

Team 6  (4)

.721

.538

.843

3.587

36

108

.000

Team 7  (4)

.955

.926

.975

22.439

36

108

.000

Team 8  (6)

.954

.926

.973

21.627

36

108

.000

Team 9  (6)

.930

.887

.960

14.256

36

108

.000

Team 10  (3)

.911

.847

.951

11.244

36

108

.000

Team 11 (4)

.964

.940

.980

27.799

36

108

.000

Table 12
(continued)

Intraclass
Correlation Coefficients – Shared Leadership and Team Potency

Intraclass Correlationa

95% Confidence Interval

F Test with True Value 0

Team ID (Number of Members Including
Team Leader)

Lower Bound

Upper Bound

Value

df1

df2

Sig

Team 12 (5)

.981

.969

.989

52.963

36

108

.000

Team 13 (4)

**-1.944

-3.871

-.654

.34059

36

108

.000

Team 14 (4)

.748

.583

.858

3.964

36

108

.000

Team 15 (4)

.742

.574

.855

3.881

36

108

.000

Team 16 (4)

.892

.821

.939

9.263

36

108

.000

Team 17 (4)

.737

.565

.852

3.800

36

108

.000

Team 18 (7)

.943

.910

.967

17.509

36

108

.000

Team 19 (5)

.870

.789

.926

7.683

36

108

.000

Team 20 (6)

.978

.965

.987

45.708

36

108

.000

Team 21 (3)

.934

.886

.964

15.130

36

108

.000

Team 22 (3)

.768

.600

.873

4.310

36

108

.000

Team 23 (4)

.930

.884

.961

14.264

36

108

.000

Table 12
(continued)

Intraclass Correlation
Coefficients – Shared Leadership and Team Potency

Intraclass Correlationa

95% Confidence Interval

F Test with True Value 0

Team ID (Number of Members Including
Team Leader)

Lower Bound

Upper Bound

Value

df1

df2

Sig

Team 24 (4)

.972

.953

.984

35.273

36

108

.000

Team 25 (5)

.854

.763

.917

6.837

36

108

.000

Team 26 (5)

.882

.808

.933

8.445

36

108

.000

Team 27 (5)

.982

.970

.989

54.064

36

108

.000

Team 28 (4)

.907

.846

.948

10.709

36

108

.000

Team 29 (5)

.964

.942

.980

27.991

36

108

.000

Team 30 (3)

.787

.632

.883

4.692

36

108

.000

Team 31 (4)

.934

.890

.9636

15.094

36

108

.000

Team 32 (5)

.966

.944

.981

29.226

36

108

.000

Team 33 (4)

.864

.775

.924

7.366

36

108

.000

Note. Two-way random effects model where both
people effects and measures effects are random.

*
Indicates ICC lower than .700, however marginally acceptable within-group
agreement.

* * Indicates ICC values
at an unacceptable value, much lower than .700 (Lack of within-group
agreement).

Table 13

ANOVA for Shared Transformational Leadership
(SLALL)

Variable

Sum
of Squares

df

Mean
Square

F

Sig.

Between
Groups

SLALL

26.506

30

.884

2.884

.000

Within
Groups

SLALL

31.858

104

.306

The vertical team leadership data was
obtained through the Multifactor Leadership Quotient (MLQ).   Since the first hypothesis
identifies transformational leadership as the independent variable, the five
transformational factors were combined into one measure of transformational
vertical leadership.  Though the
factor combinations were different than Pearce’s (1997) use of catalyzing
vertical leadership, the motive for combining them is the same: to reduce the
number of variables. To test the usability of the vertical leadership data, the
null hypothesis that several independent population means are equal must be
rejected. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) test much be conducted.  It is important to satisfy the
assumptions of independent random samples, normally distributed populations,
and equal population variances.  The
latter is accomplished by calculating and comparing within-group and
between-group variability of the means, known as the F Ratio (Norusis,
2003).

Descriptive
statistics for vertical transformational leadership in Appendix C show a variance
in the mean scores for each of the 31 team leaders from a low of 1.75 (members
rating), 1.98 (team leader and members combined rating), and 1.99 (all raters,
including 12 managers) in Team 15, to a high of 3.56 (members rating), 3.54
(team leader and members combined rating and all raters) in Team 25.  More significantly, the ANOVA in Table 14
shows a Between Groups F-Ratio of 2.4737 at a significance level of .01
(members rating), 2.2950 at .01 level of significance (team leader and members combined
rating), and 2.327 at a .01 level of significance when available managers of
team leaders rated their vertical leadership.  The null hypothesis that the independent
population means for 31 team leaders’ transformational vertical leadership
scores are equal is clearly rejected.
The independent variable of transformation vertical leadership data for
31 team leaders may be used throughout the remainder of the data analysis, in
support of the recommendation of Avolio,
Sivasubramaniam, and Murry (2000).

Moving
to vertical transactional contingent reward leadership (TA-1), descriptive
statistics in Appendix D show a variance in the mean scores for each of the 31
team leaders from a low of 1.92 (members rating) and 2.00 (team leader and
members combined rating and all raters) in Team 15, to a high of 3.67 (members
rating) in Team 17 and 3.50 (team leader and members combined rating and all
raters) in Team 25.  More
significantly, the ANOVA in Table 15 shows a Between Groups F-Ratio of 1.616 at
a significance level of .05 (members rating), 1.737 at .022 level of
significance (team leader and combined rating), and 1.746 at .019 level of
significance (all raters, inclusive of 10 managers of team leaders).  The null hypothesis that the independent
population means for 31 team leaders’ transactional contingent reward
vertical leadership scores are equal is rejected, since none of the rater
groups’ rating means exceeded the .05 level of significance.  The independent variable of
transactional contingent reward vertical leadership data for 31 team leaders
may also be used throughout the remainder of the data analysis, again, in
support of the recommendation of Avolio,
Sivasubramaniam, and Murry (2000).

Table 14

ANOVA for Vertical Transformational
Leadership

Variable

Sum
of Squares

df

Mean
Square

F

Sig.

Between
Groups

TFALL (Members)

17.164

30

.572

2.437

.001

TFALL (Members & Leader)

16.312

30

.544

2.295

.001

TFALL (All Raters)

16.421

30

.547

2.327

.001

Within
Groups

TFALL (Members)

17.138

73

.235

TFALL (Members & Leader)

24.641

104

.237

TFALL (All Raters)

27.292

116

.235

Table 15

ANOVA for Vertical Transactional Contingent
Reward Leadership

Variable

Sum of Squares

Df

Mean Square

F

Sig.

Between Groups

TA-1 (Members)

21.474

30

.716

1.616

.050

TA-1

(Members & Leader)

22.990

30

.766

1.737

.022

TA-1 (All Raters)

22.307

30

.744

1.746

.019

Within Groups

TA-1 (Members)

32.331

73

.443

TA-1

(Members & Leader)

45.897

104

.441

TA-1 (All Raters)

49.388

116

.426

Testing the Usability of Group Potency Data

Addressing
the fourth research question, regarding the extent to which vertical and shared
leadership is related to group potency within high-tech teams, the fourth set
of hypotheses are: 4a.  There is a
statistically significant positive relationship between transformational
vertical leadership with group potency.

4b.  There is a statistically significant
positive relationship between transactional contingent reward vertical
leadership with group potency.

4c.  There is a statistically significant
positive relationship between shared leadership with group potency.

In
order to test these hypotheses, regression analysis was used to determine the
linear relationships between vertical transformational and contingent reward
transactional leadership with group potency.  The relationship between shared
leadership and group potency was also tested in this way.  To determine whether any additional team
data needed to be withdrawn, ANOVA tests were performed for group potency data
to determine whether the data represented independent population samples.
Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) were determined along with shared
transformational leadership to validate the collective construct of group
potency.

The
Group Potency descriptive statistics in Appendix E shows a variance in the mean
scores for each of the 31 team leaders from a low of 1.94 (team leader and
members combined rating) in Team 20, to a high of 3.97 (team leader and members
combined rating) in Team 25.  More
significantly, the ANOVA in Table 16 shows a Between Groups F-Ratio of 2.953 at
a significance level of .000 (team leader and members combined rating).  The null hypothesis that the independent
population means for 31 team leaders’ group potency scores are equal is
rejected, since none of the means exceeded the .05 level of significance.  The group potency variable data for 31
teams may also be used throughout the remainder of the data analysis, in
support of the original construct validated by Guzzo (1993).

Table 16

ANOVA for Group Potency (POT)

Variable

Sum
of Squares

Df

Mean
Square

F

Sig.

Between
Groups

POT (Member & Leader)

35.849

30

1.195

2.953

.000

Within
Groups

POT (Member & Leader)

42.084

104

.405

Relationships Among Vertical, Shared
Leadership and Group Potency

In
support of hypotheses 1, 2, 4a, 4b, and 4c,  the relationships among the variables of
a transformational and transactional contingent reward vertical leadership,
transformational shared leadership, and group potency are determined through
Pearson correlations and multiple regression analysis.  Table 17 shows the descriptive
statistics for transformational vertical leadership (TFALL), transactional
contingent reward vertical leadership (TA-1), transformational shared
leadership (SLALL), and group potency (POT). Vertical leadership’s sample
size contains 10 additional managers of team leaders, who assessed only
vertical leadership style.

In
Table 18, Pearson correlation coefficients for these variables show moderate to
strong correlations between all variables at the .01 level of
significance.  The strongest
correlation occurs between transformational vertical leadership and
transformational shared leadership at a Pearson coefficient of .782.  The weakest correlation, and yet still
moderate, exists between transactional contingent reward leadership and group
potency at a Pearson coefficient of .558.

Table 17

Descriptive Statistics for Vertical, Shared
Leadership, and Group Potency

Variable

Mean

SD

N

TFALL

2.9204

.

.54718

147

TA-1

2.9014

.

.70076

147

SLALL

2.8215

.

.66106

137

POT

3.0620

.

.76443

137

Having determined the correlations among vertical
leadership, group potency and shared leadership, a stepwise multiple regression
analysis was performed to determine a model of the independent variables with
the strongest effect upon the variability within the shared leadership
variable.  All vertical leadership,
group potency, and team demographic variables were entered into the stepwise
regression equation with shared leadership as the dependent variable.  In Table 19, the first variable to enter
the regression model is transformational vertical leadership (TFALL), followed
by group potency (POT) and transactional contingent reward vertical leadership
(TA-1).  These independent variables
cause significant variance within the dependent variable of transformational
shared leadership (SLALL).

Table 18

Correlations among Vertical, Shared
Leadership, and Group Potency

Variables

TFALL

TA-1

SLALL

POT

Vertical Transformational
Leadership (TFALL)

1

.744**

.782**

.625**

Vertical Transactional
Contingent Reward Leadership (TA-1)

.744**

1

.706**

.558**

Shared Transformational
Leadership (SLALL)

.782**

.706**

1

.759**

Group Potency (POT)

.625**

.558**

.759**

1

**. Pearson Correlation
is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

In Table 20, the R-Square value for vertical transformational leadership (TFALL) is .612;
group potency (POT) is .732; vertical transactional contingent reward leadership (TA-1) is
.745.  This indicates that 61.2% of
the variability within shared transformational leadership
(SLALL) can be explained by vertical transformational
leadership (TFALL).  Group potency (POT) increased the variability within
shared transformational leadership (SLALL) by
another 12.0%.  Vertical transactional contingent reward leadership (TA-1) increased
the variability within shared transformational leadership
(SLALL) by another 1.3%.
Together, these three independent variables account for 74.5% of the
variability within the dependent variable, shared transformational
leadership (SLALL).

The ANOVA in Table 21 confirms that the .000 level of
significance for all three independent variables rejects the null hypothesis
that there is no linear relationship between vertical
transformational leadership (TFALL), group
potency (POT), vertical transactional
contingent reward leadership (TA-1) with shared
transformational leadership (SLALL).

Table
19

Multiple Regression Analysis –
Vertical Leadership and Group Potency’s Effect upon Shared Leadership

Model

Variables Entereda

1

2

3

Vertical Transformational
Leadership (TFALL)

Group Potency (POT)

Vertical Transactional
Contingent Reward Leadership (TA-1)

Note. Method:
Stepwise  (Criteria: Probability
of F to enter <  = .050;
Probability of F to remove  > =
.100.

a  Dependent Variable: Shared
Transformational Leadership (SLALL)Pearson Correlation is significant at the
0.01 level (2-tailed).

Table
20

Regression Analysis Model Summary- Shared
Leadership

Model

R

R2

Adjusted
R2

R2
Change

F
Change

Sig
F Change

1

.782a

.612

.609

.612

213.134

.000

2

.855b

.732

.728

.119

59.664

.000

3

.863c

.745

.739

.013

6.866

.010

a Predictors:
(Constant), TFALL

b
Predictors: (Constant), TFALL, POT

c
Predictors: (Constant), TFALL, POT, TA-1

Table
21

Regression Analysis ANOVAd -  Shared Leadership

Model

(Regression)

Sum of Squares

Df

Mean Square

F

Sig

1

36.386

1

36.386

213.134

. 000a

2

43.486

2

21.743

182.708

.000b

3

44.269

3

14.756

129.426

.000c

a. Predictors:
(Constant), TFALL

b. Predictors:
(Constant), TFALL, POT

c. Predictors:
(Constant), TFALL, POT, TA-1

Group potency may act as the dependent variable, with
vertical and shared leadership acting as the independent variables. This is
supported by the research of Pearce (1997) and Lester, Meglino, and Korsgaard
(2002).   It is also possible that one of the
correlated demographic variables may act as an independent variable to group
potency.  A relationship between
group potency and time pressure was suggested by Gevers, van Eerde, and Rutte
(2001).  To test this, a stepwise
multiple regression analysis was performed to determine which model of these
independent variables might have the strongest effect upon the variability
within the group potency variable.
In Table 22, all vertical and shared leadership, as well as, demographic
variables were tested.  Entering
into the regression model were transformational shared leadership (SLALL) and
team proximity (PROX).
Transformational vertical leadership (TFALL), transactional contingent reward
vertical leadership (TA-1), and all other team demographic variables of member
familiarity (FAM), team maturity (DUR), team size (NUMB), and team membership
load (LOAD) were excluded from the regression equation.  SLALL and PROX may act as independent
variables and cause significant variance within the acting dependent variable
of group potency (POT).  In Table 23,
the R-Square value for SLALL is .576 and PROX is .610.  This indicates that 57.6% of the
variability within POT can be explained by SLALL and 3.4% of the variability is
caused by PROX.  The ANOVA in Table 24
confirms that the .000 level of significance for SLALL as an independent
variable rejects the null hypothesis that there is no linear relationship
between SLALL and PROX with POT.

Together
with the prior regression analysis, the logical model may be that vertical
leadership (TFALL and TA-1) act as independent variables to transformational
shared leadership (SLALL), with SLAA and team member proximity (PROX) acting as
independent variables to group potency (POT).  The relationship pathway from shared
leadership to group potency has been suggested by Avolio, Sivasubramaniam,
Murry, Jung, and Garger (2003). Path analysis generated through AMOS should
demonstrate this model pathway.

Table
22

Multiple Regression Analysis – All
Variables’ Effect upon Group Potency

Model

Variables Entereda

1

2

Shared Transformational
Leadership (SLALL)

Team Member Proximity (PROX)

Note. Method: Stepwise
(Criteria: Probability of F to enter <  = .050; Probability of F to remove  > = .100.

a  Dependent Variable: Group Potency (POT) Pearson
Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

Table
23

Regression Analysis Model Summary- Group
Potency

Model

R

R2

Adjusted
R2

R2
Change

F
Change

Sig
F Change

1

.759a

.576

.573

.576

183.462

.000

2

.781b

.610

.604

.034

11.569

.001

a Predictors:
(Constant), SLALL

b
Predictors: (Constant), SLALL, PROX

Table
24

Regression Analysis ANOVA - Group Potency

Model

(Regression)

Sum of Squares

Df

Mean Square

F

Sig.

1

45.783

1

45.783

183.462

. 000a

2

48.461

2

24.230

104.697

.000b

a. Predictors:
(Constant), SLALL

b. Predictors:
(Constant), SLALL, PROX

Relationship Between Vertical Leadership
Factors and Shared Leadership

Up
to this point in the analysis, for simplification, transformational vertical
leadership had been combined from five separate transformational factors from
the multifactor leadership quotient (MLQ) assessment.  As seen in Table 25, Pearson
correlations with shared leadership (SLALL) were calculated using five
transformational (TF-1 through TF-5), two transactional (TA-1 and TA-2), and
two passive avoidant (PA-1 and PA-2) factors.   To assist in the interpretation,
Table 26 indicates the vertical leadership factors with examples of each
behavioral measure in descending order of Pearson correlation with shared
leadership.

As
expected, all five transformational leadership factors are strongly correlated
with shared leadership.  A goal of
transformational leadership is to develop others’ leadership or a team's
capabilities (Avolio, Bass & Jung, 1996).  The strength of the Pearson correlations
indicate that in order of strongest correlation the
vertical leader’s focus on development (Intellectual Consideration
=.722), the group’s interest (Idealized Attributes = .693), confidence in
the group’s achievement (Inspirational Motivation = .632), collective
purpose (Idealized Behaviors =.587), and seeking of differing perspectives
(Intellectual Stimulation = .585) are the at the core of developing shared
leadership.

Also
confirmed was that transactional contingent reward vertical leadership is
significantly and strongly correlated with shared leadership.  A leader’s clear expectations
about the attainment of performance goals (Contingent Reward = .706) is
strongly correlated with shared leadership.  The use of transactional
leadership "clarifies what the associates need to do for a reward"
and is an "essential component of the full range of effective
leadership" (Avolio & Bass, p. 21).  A balanced leadership approach was
called for by Thamhain (2004).
Somewhat of a surprise in the data is that focusing
attention on irregularities, mistakes, exceptions, and deviations from
standards (Management-by-Exception: Active =.354) is correlated with shared
leadership.  This is counter to
Pearce’s (1997) inclusion of this factor into the controlling vertical
leadership style and its negative relationship with potency and shared
leadership.

Similar
to previous effective vertical and shared leadership research (Pearce
& Sims, 2002; Cox, Pearce, & Perry, 2004), passive
avoidant leadership was moderate negatively correlated with shared leadership.  Waiting for things to go wrong before
taking action (Management-by-Exception: Passive = -.309) and avoiding involvement
when important issues arise (Laissez-Faire = -.500 are ineffective ways to
develop shared leadership.

Table
25

Pearson Correlations for All MLQ Vertical
Leadership Factors and Shared Leadership

Variables

TF1

TF-2

TF-3

TF-4

TF-5

TA-1

TA-2

PA-1

PA-2

SLAL

TF-1 Idealized Attributes

1

.646**

.695**

.516**

.708**

.655**

.276**

-.359**

-.517**

.693**

TF-2 Idealized Behaviors

.

646**

1

.

617**

.495**

.

513**

.617**

.237**

-.117

-.222**

.587**

TF-3 Inspirational Motivation

.695**

.617**

1

.578**

.563**

.634**

.225**

-.149

-.389**

.632**

TF-4 Intellectual Stimulation

.516**

.495**

.578**

1

.551**

.486**

-.267**

-.201*

-.193*

.585**

TF-5 Intellectual Consider

.708**

.513**

.563**

.551**

1

.645**

.294**

-.272**

-.422**

.722**

TA-1 Contingent Reward

.655**

.617**

.634**

.486**

.645**

1

.326**

-.237**

-.421**

.706**

TA-2 Manage-by-Except: Act

.276**

.237**

.225**

-.267**

.294**

.326**

1

.061

-.059

.354**

PA-1 Manage-by-Except: Pas

-.359**

-.117**

-.149

-.201*

-.272**

-.237**

.061

1

.511**

-.309**

PA-2 Laissez-Faire

-.517**

-.222**

-.389**

-.193*

-.422**

-.421**

-.059

.511**

1

-.500**

SLALL Shared Leadership

.693**

.587**

.632**

.585**

.722**

.706**

.354**

-.309**

-.500**

1

**. Pearson Correlation
is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

Table 26

MLQ Factors
(Descending Order) – Positive to Negative Correlations

Pearson                                    Transformational
Factors

Correlations

.722
TF-5 Intellectual Consideration (IC) - Helps me to develop my
strengths

.693
TF-1 Idealized Attributes (IA) - Goes beyond self-interest for the
good of

the group

.632
TF-3 Inspirational Motivation (IM) - Expresses confidence that goals
will

be achieved

.587
TF-2 Idealized Behaviors (IB) - Emphasizes the importance of having a

collective sense of mission

.585
TF-4 Intellectual Stimulation (IS) - Seeks
differing perspectives when

solving problems

Pearson
Transactional
Factors

Correlations

.706
TA-1 Contingent Reward (CR) - Makes clear what one can expect to

receive when performance goals are achieved

.354
TA-2 Management-by-Exception: Active (MBEA) - Focuses attention on

irregularities, mistakes, exceptions, and deviations from standards

Pearson
Passive/Avoidant
Behavior Factors

Correlations

-.309
PA-1 Management-by-Exception: Passive (MBEP) - Waits for things to go

wrong before taking action

-.500
PA-2 Laissez-Faire (LF) - Avoids getting involved when important
issues

arise

Relationship Between Demographic Variables
and Shared Leadership

Research
Question 3 asks, “To what extent do team demographics of team size,
maturity, proximity, familiarity, and team membership load influence the
development of shared leadership within high-tech teams?”  Two hypotheses answer this question:

3a.  There is a statistically significant
positive relationship between the team demographic variables of team maturity,
familiarity, and proximity with the development of shared leadership.   3b.  There is a statistically significant
negative relationship between the team demographic variables of team size and
team membership load with the development of shared leadership.

To
establish the degree of variability within shared leadership caused by the demographic
variables, a stepwise multiple regression analysis was performed.  Demonstrated earlier in Table 23, all
variables were entered as independent, with shared leadership as the dependent
variable.  Within this regression
analysis, group potency (POT) was included as an independent variable.  None of the team demographic variables
entered the regression equation.

Given
the prior regression analysis, in Table 26, with group potency (POT) as the
dependent variable and shared leadership (SLALL) and proximity (PROX) as the
independent variables entering the equation, another regression was performed excluding
group potency.  A model of the
independent variables (demographic variables included, group potency excluded) with
shared leadership was determined and reported in Table 27.  Here, the first variable to enter the
regression model is transformational vertical leadership (TFALL), followed by
transactional contingent reward vertical leadership (TA-1), and finally, team
member familiarity (FAM).

Causing
significant variance within the dependent variable of transformational shared
leadership (SLALL), Table 28 shows the R-Square value for transformational
vertical leadership (TFALL)  is
.612; transactional contingent reward vertical leadership (TA-1) is .641; team
member familiarity (FAM) is .657.
This indicates that 61.2% of the variability within shared leadership (SLALL)
can be explained by transformational vertical leadership (TFALL).  Transactional contingent reward vertical
leadership (TA-1) increased the variability within shared leadership (SLALL) by
another 2.9%.  Team member
familiarity (FAM) increased the variability within shared leadership (SLALL) by
another 1.6%.  Together, these three
independent variables account for 65.7% of the variability within the dependent
variable, shared leadership (SLALL).
The ANOVA in Table 29 confirms that the .000 level of significance for
all three independent variables rejects the null hypothesis that there is no
linear relationship between transformational vertical leadership (TFALL),
transactional contingent reward vertical leadership (TA-1), team member
familiarity (FAM) with shared leadership (SLALL).

Table 27

Regression Analysis of All Independent
Variables with Dependent Variable of Transformational Shared Leadership

Model

Variables Entereda

1

2

3

Vertical Transformational
Leadership (TFALL)

Vertical Transactional
Contingent Reward Leadership (TA-1)

Team Member Familiarity (FAM)

Note. Method:
Stepwise  (Criteria: Probability
of F to enter <  = .050;
Probability of F to remove  > =
.100.

a  Dependent Variable: Shared Leadership
(SLALL)Pearson Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

Table
28

Regression Analysis Model Summary- All
Independent Variables with Shared Leadership

Model

R

R2

Adjusted
R2

R2
Change

F
Change

Sig
F Change

1

.782a

.612

.609

.612

213.134

.000

2

.800b

.641

.635

.029

10.656

.001

3

.810c

.657

.649

.016

6.118

.015

a Predictors:
(Constant), TFALL

b
Predictors: (Constant), TFALL, TA-1

c
Predictors: (Constant), TFALL, TA-1, FAM

Table
29

ANOVA d- All Independent
Variables with Shared Leadership

Model

(Regression)

Sum of Squares

Df

Mean Square

F

Sig.

1

36.386

1

36.386

213.134

. 000a

2

38.083

2

19.042

119.517

.000b

3

39.0229

3

13.007

84.760

.000c

a. Predictors:
(Constant), TFALL

b. Predictors:
(Constant), TFALL, TA-1

c. Predictors:
(Constant), TFALL, TA-1, FAM

d. Dependent
Variable: SLALL

In
Table 30, Pearson correlation coefficients have been determined to identify any
other correlations that may support Hypothesis 3a.  Review of Pearson correlations
between  member familiarity (FAM), member
proximity (PROX), and team maturity (DUR), with transformational shared
leadership (SLALL), show moderate correlation of .397 for member familiarity (FAM)
at the .01 significance level, weak correlation of .202 for member proximity (PROX)
at the .05 level of significance, and correlation of .055 for team maturity (DUR)
without statistical significance. Hypothesis 3a is partially supported, whereby
there is a statistically significant positive correlation between member
familiarity (FAM) and member proximity (PROX) with shared leadership (SLALL).  The hypothesis that team maturity (DUR)
would support the emergence of shared leadership was not supported.

Additionally, Table 30 shows Pearson correlation
coefficients that do not support Hypotheses 3b.  Review of correlations between team size
(NUMB) and team membership load (LOAD) with shared leadership (SLALL), show
positive correlation values of .135 for team size (NUMB) and .018 for team
membership load (LOAD) exceeding the .05 level of significance. The hypothesis
predicted negative correlations, and so Hypothesis 3b is not supported.

Additional correlations between demographic variables
can be found within Table 30.  Member
familiarity (FAM) is moderately correlated at the .01 significance level, in
descending order, with group potency (POT) (.422), member proximity (PROX)
(.415), shared leadership (SLALL) (.397), vertical transformational leadership
(TFALL) (.357), and transactional contingent reward leadership (TA-1) (.274).  Member familiarity (FAM) is weakly
correlated with team size (NUMB) (.198) at the .05 level of significance.

Table 30

Correlations of All Variables

Variables

TFALL

TA-1

SLALL

POT

FAM

PROX

LOAD

NUMB

DUR

Transform Vert Lead TFALL

1

.744**

.782**

.625**

.357**

.177*

-.023

.143

.076

Transact Very Lead TA-1

.

.744**

1

.

.706**

.558**

.

.274**

.109

.036

.154

-.022

Shared Lead

SLALL

.695**

.706**

1

.759**

.397**

.202*

.018

.135

.055

Group
Potency POT

.782**

.558**

.759**

1

.422**

.333**

.114

.167

.149

Member Familiarity FAM

.625**

.274**

.397**

.422**

1

.415**

.016

.013

.180*

Member Proximity PROX

.357**

.109

.202*

.333**

.415**

1

.014

-.056

.034

Membership Load

LOAD

.177*

.036

.018

.114

.016

.014

1

.010

.012

Team Size NUMB

.143

.154

.135

.167

.013

-.056

.010

1

.198*

Team Maturity DUR

.076

-.022

.055

.149

.180*

.034

.012

.198*

1

**. Pearson
Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

* . Pearson
Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).

Member proximity (PROX) is moderately correlated at
the .01 level of significance with member familiarity (FAM) (.415) and group
potency (POT) (.333) and weakly correlated at the .05 level of significance
with shared leadership (SLALL) (.202) and vertical transformational leadership
(TFALL) (.177).  Team maturity (DUR)
is weakly correlated at the .05 significance level with team size (NUMB) (.198)
and member familiarity (FAM) (.180).
Team size (NUMB) is weakly correlated at the .05 level with team
maturity (DUR) (.198).

Team Leader and Members’ Self-Rating
of Team Effectiveness

Within
the Multifactor Leadership Quotient for Teams assessment (TMLQ), several additional,
yet optional, questions are asked.
One question specifically asked, “The overall effectiveness of
this team can be classified as: 0=not effective, 1=only slightly effective,
2=effective, 3=very effective, 4=extremely effective.   One way to think about this
self-perceived assessment of team effectiveness might be as an addendum to
shared leadership. In prior studies, team effectiveness or performance has been
measured as the dependent variable (Pearce, 1997; Cox, Pearce, and Perry, 2004).
To test for a similar effect in
this study, the effectiveness question was isolated from the TMLQ as a
potential dependent variable.  A
regression analysis was performed with team effectiveness as the dependent
variable and all other variables as independent.  Table 31 shows the Pearson
Correlations.

In
Table 31, Pearson correlation coefficients for all variables with team
effectiveness (EFF) show moderate to strong correlations for shared leadership
(SLALL) (.657), group potency (POT) (.587), vertical transformation leadership
(TFALL) (.573), and transactional contingent reward leadership (TA-1) (.477).  Moderate to low correlations with team
effectiveness (EFF) are member familiarity (FAM) (.296), team size (NUMB)
(.258), and team maturity (DUR) (.241) at less than .01 level of
significance.  Member proximity (PROX)
(.144) and membership load (LOAD) (.000) were not statistically correlated.

Table 31

Team Leader and Members’ Self-Rating
of Team Effectiveness – Correlations of all Variables

Variables

EFF

TFALL

TA-1

SL

ALL

POT

FAM

PROX

LOAD

NUMB

DUR

Team Effect

EFF

1

.573**

.477**

.657**

.587**

.296**

.144

.000

.258**

.241**

Transform Vert Lead TFALL

.573**

1

.744**

.782**

.625**

.357**

.177*

-.023

.143

.076

Transact Vert Lead TA-1

.477**

.

.744**

1

.

.706**

.558**

.

.274**

.109

.036

.154

-.022

Shared Lead

SLALL

.657**

.695**

.706**

1

.759**

.397**

.202*

.018

.135

.055

Group Potency POT

.587**

.782**

.558**

.759**

1

.422**

.333**

.114

.167

.149

Member Familiarity FAM

.296**

.625**

.274**

.397**

.422**

1

.415**

.016

.013

.180*

Member Proximity PROX

.144

.357**

.109

.202*

.333**

.415**

1

.014

-.056

.034

Membership Load

LOAD

.000

.177*

.036

.018

.114

.016

.014

1

.010

.012

Team Size NUMB

.258**

.143

.154

.135

.167

.013

-.056

.010

1

.198*

Team Maturity DUR

.241**

.076

-.022

.055

.149

.180*

.034

.012

.198*

1

**. Pearson
Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

* . Pearson
Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).

Having determined the correlations between team
effectiveness and the other variables, a stepwise multiple regression analysis
was performed to determine a model of the independent variables with the
strongest effect upon the variability within team effectiveness.  All variables were entered into the
stepwise regression equation with team effectiveness as the dependent
variable.  This direction was
logical due to the aforementioned reasons regarding prior research.

In
Table 32, the first variable to enter the regression model is transformational
shared leadership (SLALL), followed by team maturity (DUR), team size (NUMB)
and transformational vertical leadership (TFALL).  These independent variables cause
significant variance within the dependent variable of team effectiveness.

Table 32.

Team Effectiveness – Regression
Variables Entered

Model

Variables Entereda

1

2

3

4

Shared Leadership (SLALL)

Team Maturity (DUR)

Team Size (NUMB)

Vertical Transformational
Leadership (TFALL)

Note. Method:
Stepwise  (Criteria: Probability
of F to enter <  = .050;
Probability of F to remove  > =
.100.

a  Dependent Variable: Team Effectiveness
(EFF) Pearson Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

In Table 33, the R-Square value for shared
leadership (SLALL) is .432; team maturity (DUR) is .474; team size (NUMB) is
.492, and vertical transformational leadership (TFALL) is .508.  This indicates that 43.2% of the
variability within team effectiveness (EFF) can be explained by shared
leadership (SLALL).  Team maturity
(DUR) increased the variability within shared leadership (SLALL) 4.2%, team
size (NUMB) by another 1.8%, and vertical transformational leadership (TFALL)
was an additional 1.6% .  Vertical
transactional contingent reward leadership (TA-1) increased the variability
within shared leadership (SLALL) by another 1.3%.  Together, these four variables account
for 50.8% of the variability within the dependent variable, team
effectiveness.

Table 33

Team Effectiveness – Regression Model
Summary

Model

R

R2

Adjusted
R2

R2
Change

F
Change

Sig
F Change

1

.657a

.432

.428

.432

102.602

.000

2

.688b

.474

.466

.042

10.709

.001

3

.701c

.492

.480

.018

4.711

.032

3

.712d

.508

.493

.016

4.199

.042

a Predictors:
(Constant), SLALL

b
Predictors: (Constant), SLALL, DUR

c
Predictors: (Constant), SLALL, DUR, NUMB

d
Predictors: (Constant), SLALL, DUR, NUMB, TFALL

The
ANOVA in Table 34 confirms that the .000 level of significance for all four
independent variables rejects the null hypothesis that there is no linear
relationship between TFALL, POT, TA-1 with SLALL.

Table 34

Team Effectiveness – ANOVAe

Model

(Regression)

Sum of Squares

Df

Mean Square

F

Sig.

1

40.402

1

40.402

102.602

. 000a

2

44.336

2

44.336

119.517

.000b

3

46.020

3

46.020

60.345

.000c

4

47.486

4

47.486

34.010

.0000d

a. Predictors:
(Constant), SLALL

b. Predictors:
(Constant), SLALL, DUR

c. Predictors:
(Constant), SLALL, DUR, NUMB

d. Predictors:
(Constant), SLALL, DUR, NUMB, TFALL

e. Dependent
Variable: Team Effectiveness

Path Analysis Supports the Direction of
Relationships

Since
there is some ambiguity for the direction of influence between group potency
and shared leadership (hypothesis #4), path analysis assists in determining a
likely relationship path.  In Figure
1, the likely path of all variables was hypothesized.  Transformational (TFALL) and
transactional contingent reward (TA-1) vertical leadership could act as
independent variables to either shared leadership (SLALL) or group potency
(POT).  The team demographic
variables were hypothesized as independent variables to the dependent variable
of shared leadership.  Lastly, it
was unclear which variable, shared leadership or group potency, acted as
independent variable in relation to the other.  The prior regression analyses of shared
leadership and group potency helped to establish the potential for a best fit
model.  Path analysis was performed
using AMOS 16.0 to visually analyze and establish the visual model that best
describes the interaction among correlated variables supporting the hypotheses
of this study.  There were some
confirmations and some surprises.  Figures 2 through 6 serve to build the
logical path to the best fit model.

Though
it seemed reasonable to project that vertical leadership acts as independent
variables to group potency and shared leadership, the prior regression analyses
indicated that shared leadership may be a mediating variable between vertical
leadership and group potency.  Figure
2 demonstrates the path model for shared leadership as the dependent variable
for vertical transformational leadership (TFALL), vertical transactional
contingent reward leadership (TA-1), and group potency (POT).  In Figure 2, estimated correlation values
are .74 for vertical transformational leadership (TFALL) and vertical
transactional contingent reward leadership (TA-1); .62 for vertical
transformational leadership (TFALL) and group potency (POT); and .54 for vertical
transactional contingent reward leadership (TA-1) and group potency (POT).  AMOS 16.0 further calculated
standardized regression weights of .38 for vertical transformational leadership
(TFALL) and shared leadership (SLALL); .18 for vertical transactional
contingent reward leadership (TA-1) and shared leadership (SLALL); and .42 for group
potency (POT) and shared leadership (SLALL).  The value of .74 is the squared multiple
correlation of shared leadership (SLALL) with vertical transformational
leadership (TFALL), vertical transactional contingent reward leadership (TA-1),
and group potency (POT).

Figure
2.  Path Model - SLALL as Sole Dependent Variable

Contrasting
shared leadership (SLALL) with group potency (POT) as the dependent variable,
Figure 3 shows the correlations and standardized regression weights.   Figure 3 demonstrates the path
model for group potency (POT) as the dependent variable for vertical transformational
leadership (TFALL), vertical transactional contingent reward leadership (TA-1),
and shared leadership (SLALL).  In
Figure 3, estimated correlation values are .74 for vertical transformational
leadership (TFALL) and vertical transactional contingent reward leadership
(TA-1); .77 for vertical transformational leadership (TFALL) and shared
leadership (SLALL); and .69 for vertical transactional contingent reward
leadership (TA-1) and shared leadership (SLALL).  The standardized regression weights are .07
for vertical transformational leadership (TFALL) and group potency (POT); .01
for vertical transactional contingent reward leadership (TA-1) and group
potency (POT); and .69 for shared leadership (SLALL) and group potency (POT).  The value of .57 is the squared multiple
correlation of group potency (POT) with vertical transformational leadership
(TFALL), vertical transactional contingent reward leadership (TA-1), and shared
leadership (SLALL).

Figure
3.  Path Model - POT as Sole Dependent Variable

A
comparison of the results in Figures 2 and 3 helps to establish the likely
dependent variable for vertical leadership.  The regression weights between vertical
transformational leadership (TFALL)/ vertical transactional contingent reward
leadership (TA-1) and shared leadership (SLALL) (.38/.18), when compared with vertical
transformational leadership (TFALL)/ vertical transactional contingent reward
leadership (TA-1) and group potency (POT) (.07/.01), sets the likely path as both
styles of vertical leadership (TFALL and TA-1) as the independent variables and
transformational shared leadership (SLALL) as the dependent variable.  Further comparison of Figures 2 and 3
demonstrates the likely relationship between group potency (POT) and shared
leadership (SLALL) to be shared leadership (SLALL) as independent variable to
the dependent group potency (POT).
The standardized regression weight between shared leadership (SLALL) and
group potency (POT) of .69 in Figure 3 exceeds the regression weight of .42
between group potency (POT) and shared leadership (SLALL) in Figure 2.

Figure
4 shows the likely path with shared leadership as the mediating variable
between vertical leadership and group potency.

Figure
4.  Path Model - SLALL as a Dependent and Mediating Variable to POT

Figures 5 through 7 serve to demonstrate the likely
path for the two demographic variables, team proximity (PROX) and team member
familiarity (FAM), that entered the regression models for shared leadership
(SLALL) and group potency (POT), respectively.  Member familiarity (FAM) entered the shared
leadership (SLALL) regression model, along with vertical transformational
leadership (TFALL) and vertical transactional contingent reward leadership
(TA-1), in Table 22.  Member
proximity (PROX) entered the group potency (POT) regression model, along with shared
leadership (SLALL), in Table 22.   For comparison purposes, the
following three path models demonstrate member familiarity (FAM) and member
proximity (PROX) as independent variables to group potency (POT) in Figure 5, shared
leadership (SLALL) in Figure 6, and then member familiarity (FAM) and member
proximity (PROX) are placed in the best fit model in Figure 7.

Figure
5.  Path Model – FAM and PROX Added as Independent Variables to POT

Figure
6.  Path Model – FAM and PROX Added as Independent Variables to SLALL

In
Figures 5 & 6, a comparison of the likely relationship between member
familiarity (FAM) and member proximity (PROX) to group potency (POT) is made to
member familiarity (FAM) and member proximity (PROX) to shared leadership (SLALL).  It was hypothesized that member
familiarity (FAM) and member proximity (PROX) would both have a positive
correlation with shared leadership (SLALL).  Though Table 31 confirms these
correlations, member familiarity (FAM) (.397) and member proximity (PROX) (.202)
to shared leadership (SLALL), member proximity (PROX) entered the regression
model for group potency (POT) in Table 22. Therefore, the likely paths of these
variables need to be explored.  The
standardized regression weight between member familiarity (FAM) and shared
leadership (SLALL) of .12 in Figure 6 exceeds the regression weight of .08
between member familiarity (FAM) and group potency (POT) in Figure 5.  The standardized regression weight
between member proximity (PROX) and group potency (POT) of .16 in Figure 5
exceeds the regression weight of .03 between member proximity (PROX) and group
potency (POT) in Figure 6.  This
relationship between member proximity (PROX) and group potency (POT), first
seen in Table 22 and then confirmed in Figure 6 was unexpected.

Figure
7 shows the best fit path model for all statistically significant variables
entering all  regression
models.   Both transformational
(TFALL) and transactional contingent reward (TA-1) vertical leadership styles,
as well as team member familiarity (FAM) account for 65% of the variability of
transformational shared leadership (SLALL). This estimated squared multiple
correlation value of .65 in Figure 7 tracks well with the Adjusted R Square
value of .649 in Table 32.  Further,
both transformational shared leadership (SLALL) and team member proximity
(PROX) account for 60% of the variability of group potency (POT). This
estimated squared multiple correlation value of .60 in Figure 7 tracks well
with the Adjusted R Square value of .604 in Table 25.

Figure
7.  Path Model – Best Fit Model

Figure
8 considers the best fit path model for all variables entering all regression
models, including the team effectiveness variable as analyzed in Tables 32-34.  In this analysis, shared leadership
(SLALL), transformational vertical leadership (TFALL), team maturity (DUR) and
team size (NUMB) account for 50.8% of the variability of team
effectiveness.  The estimated
squared multiple correlation value of .49 in Figure 7 tracks well with the
Adjusted R Square value of .493 in Table 33.

All
of the preceding analyses included within all of these Tables and Figures serve
as the basis for the next chapter’s discussion of results, conclusions,
and recommendations.

Figure
8.  Path Model – Best Fit Model Considering Leader and Member
Assessment of Team

Effectiveness

Summary

The
research questions and hypotheses have guided this study and have been answered
through the data collection and analysis found within this chapter.  The following Table 35 summarizes the
direct responses to the hypotheses.
Hypotheses 1 and 2 were fully supported in that both transformational
and transactional contingent reward vertical leadership significantly
influenced the variability of shared leadership.  Hypothesis 3a was partially supported by
team member familiarity positively influencing the variability of shared
leadership and team member proximity positively correlating with shared
leadership.  Hypothesis 3b was not supported
since no significant negative relationships were found between team size or
membership load with shared leadership.
Hypothesis 4a and 4b was fully supported by significant positive
correlations between transformational and transactional contingent reward
vertical leadership and group potency.   Hypothesis 4c was fully supported by
shared leadership positively influencing the variability of group potency.

Table
36 summarizes additional relationships among the variables that are not listed
in Table 35, since they only indirectly support the hypotheses.  Whereas these tables are intended to simply
indicate statistically significant correlation and regression relationships,
more comprehensive findings and details are discussed within the next chapter
in Summary of Findings.

Table 35

Summary of Results
– Hypotheses Supported

Hypothesis

Supported?

Relationships

Correlation

Regression

H
1.  There is a statistically
significant positive

relationship
between transformational vertical leadership

(TFALL)
with the development of team members'

shared
leadership (SLALL).

Fully Supported

TFALL      SLALL

Hypotheses
2.  There is a statistically
significant positive

relationship
between transactional contingent reward

vertical
leadership (TA-1) with the development of team

members'
shared leadership (SLALL).

Fully Supported

TA-1      SLALL

Hypotheses
3a.  There is a statistically
significant

positive
relationship between the team demographic

variables
of team maturity (DUR), familiarity (FAM),

and
proximity (PROX) with the development of shared

leadership
SLALL).

Partially

Supported

FAM         SLALL

PROX       SLALL

Hypotheses
3b.  There is a statistically
significant

negative
relationship between the team demographic

variable
of team size (NUMB) and membership load

(LOAD)
with the development of shared leadership

(SLALL).

Table 35
(continued)

Summary of Results
– Hypotheses Supported

Not Supported

Hypothesis

Supported?

Relationships

Correlation

Regression

Hypothesis
4a:  There is a statistically
significant

positive
relationship between transformational vertical

leadership
(TFALL) with group potency (POT).

Fully Supported

TFALL       POT

Hypothesis
4b:  There is a statistically
significant

positive
relationship between transactional contingent

reward
vertical leadership (TA-1) with group potency

(POT).

Fully Supported

TA-1          POT

Hypothesis
4c:  There is a statistically
significant

positive
relationship between shared leadership

(SLALL)
with group potency (POT).

Fully Supported

SLALL      POT

Table 36

Summary of Results
– Additional Significant Relationships

Variables

Relationships -  Corr.       Regress

Team Demographics

FAM
PROX (.415)

FAM
NUMB (.198)

FAM
DUR  (.180)

DUR
SIZE (.198)

Vertical Leadership

TFALL      FAM (.357)

TFALL     PROX (.177)

TA-1
FAM (.274)

Group Potency

POT
FAM (.422)

PROX     POT

Vertical & Shared Leadership

TA-2       SLALL
(.354)

PA-1       SLALL
(-.309)

PA-2       SLALL
(-.500)

Team Effectiveness

SLALL     TEAM EFF

DUR
TEAM EFF

TFALL     TEAM EFF

NUMB      TEAM EFF

CHAPTER 5.
RESULTS, CONCLUSIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Introduction

Leading
change and complexity require effective leadership characteristics. The progression of leadership research suggests that
increasing levels of involvement and commitment by employees has the potential
for evolving into alternative forms of leadership, such as shared leadership (Wellins,
1991; Bradford & Cohen, 1998; Graetz, 2000; Shield,
Thorpe, & Nelson, 2002).
Enabling others to act (Kouzes & Posner, 1987) is the core of
leadership effectiveness as well as the core of shared leadership effectiveness
(Pearce & Conger, 2004).  When leadership is shared, both the vertical
leader and the team members may demonstrate acts of leadership (Parker, 1990;
Rost, 1995; Pearce, 1997; Yukl, 2002; Cox, Pearce & Perry, 2004).

Whereas shared leadership has
been researched within self-managed change management teams (Pearce, 1997),
shared leadership’s existence has only been proposed within more
traditional teams (Perry, Pearce, & Sims, 1999; Cox, Pearce & Perry,
2004). Up to the point of this research, the study of shared leadership within
traditional, non-self managing teams was limited and non-existent within
high-tech organizations.

Though transactional
leadership has been shown to be an effective leadership style when combined
with transformational leadership (Burns, 1978; Bass, 1985), prior research has
failed to find a positive link between transactional leadership and shared
leadership.  In addition to
transformational style, this research focused on transactional contingent
reward vertical leadership’s effect upon the emergence of shared
leadership.

Since
group potency, the collective belief within a team that it can be effective
(Guzzo, et al, 1993; Bligh, Pearce, & Kohles, 2006), has been linked
to shared leadership (Pearce, 1997), team performance, satisfaction, effort,
and effectiveness (Guzzo, et al, 1993; Lester, Meglino, & Korsgaard, 2002; Pearce,
Gallagher, & Ensley, 2002), it was included in this research.  Other researchers have called for more
data analysis of team characteristics or demographics’ effect upon the
emergence of shared leadership (Pearce & Sims, 2002; Cox, Pearce &
Perry, 2004; Wood, 2004). For this reason, these variables were added to the
study.

This
research sought to advance an understanding of the relationship between transformational
and transactional contingent reward vertical leadership styles with the
development of transformational shared leadership.  It further intended to understand the
relationships between team demographic variables of team size, maturity, proximity,
familiarity, and team membership load and the development of shared
leadership.  Finally, it attempted
to determine the relationship between group potency and vertical and shared
leadership. All of these responses to the research questions, stated in earlier
chapters, were in response to challenges of the researchers prior to this
work.  The results, conclusions, and
recommendations presented in this chapter are based on the analysis covered in
detail in the previous chapters.

As
discussed in the prior chapter, thirty-one of thirty-three teams, participating
in the study from one high-tech organization, produced the statistically
reliable data needed to validate the proposed hypotheses. Some hypotheses were
supported and some were not.  Other unexpected
patterns in the data are also discussed.
All of the discussed results are based upon the data and/or the battery
of quantitative statistical tests previously displayed and analyzed within the 36
tables and eight figures of the previous chapters.  Later in this chapter, there is a challenge
to others to carry forth where this research ends.  However, this research has substantively
contributed to the body of knowledge of shared leadership.  Whereas this research focused
exclusively on traditional, leader-led teams in high-tech organizations, no
other prior research brings to light, the answers to the following research
questions within this unique context.

Summary of Findings

Transformational
Leadership Style and Shared Leadership

Hypotheses 1 states:  There is a statistically significant
positive relationship between transformational vertical leadership with the
development of team members' shared leadership.  This hypothesis was clearly
supported.

In Table 18, a Pearson correlation coefficient of
.782 for transformational vertical leadership and transformational shared
leadership at the .01 level of significance shows a strong correlation.  Having determined the correlations
between vertical transformational leadership and shared leadership, a stepwise
multiple regression analysis was performed to determine a model of the
independent variables with the strongest effect upon the variability within the
shared leadership variable.  All
vertical leadership, group potency, and team demographic variables were entered
into the stepwise regression equation with shared leadership as the dependent
variable. Table 19 shows the first and most influential variable to enter the
regression model is transformational vertical leadership.  Given the R-Square value of .612 in
Table 20, 61.2% of the variability within shared leadership can be explained by
transformational vertical leadership.  Cox, Pearce, and Perry (2004) proposed
such a relationship between vertical transformational and shared leadership,
with vertical leadership as the independent variable.  Figure 7 graphically demonstrates the
strongest variability effect on shared leadership by transformational vertical
leadership.

As
displayed in Tables 25 and 26, Pearson correlation tests of the five individual
transformational vertical leadership factors and shared leadership showed
strong correlations. The vertical leader’s
focus on development (Intellectual Consideration =.722), the group’s
interest (Idealized Attributes = .693), confidence in the group’s achievement
(Inspirational Motivation = .632), collective purpose (Idealized Behaviors =.587),
and seeking of differing perspectives (Intellectual Stimulation = .585)
appear at the core of developing shared leadership. Important roles for
vertical leadership within organizations possessing shared leadership are those
of team leader, facilitator, or coach to enable team members to contribute
expert knowledge and skills (Pearce & Manz, 2005).

Transactional
Contingent Reward Leadership Style and Shared Leadership

Hypotheses
2 states:  There is a statistically
significant positive relationship between transactional contingent reward
vertical leadership with the development of team members' shared leadership.  This hypothesis was clearly
supported.

In
Table 18, a Pearson correlation coefficient of .706 for transactional
contingent reward vertical leadership and transformational shared leadership at
the .01 level of significance shows a strong correlation.  Additionally, transformational and
transactional contingent reward vertical leadership were strongly and
positively correlated with a Pearson of .744 at the .01 significance level.  Having determined the correlations
between vertical transactional contingent reward vertical leadership and shared
leadership, the same stepwise multiple regression analysis determined this
variable’s effect upon the variability of shared leadership. Table 19
shows transactional contingent reward to be the third variable entering the
regression model, after transformational leadership and group potency.  With an R-Square value of .745 in Table 20,
transactional contingent reward leadership increased the variability within
shared leadership by another 1.3%.  With
the group potency variability removed, another regression model was performed
to determine a model of the independent variables, excluding group potency,
with the strongest effect upon the variability within the shared leadership
variable.  In Table 19, following
transformational vertical leadership, transactional contingent reward entered
the model.  Given the R-Square value
of .641 in Table 20, 2.9% of the variability within shared leadership can be
explained by transactional contingent reward leadership.  Figure 7 graphically demonstrates the
variability effect on shared leadership by transactional contingent reward vertical
leadership.

Though
the effect upon shared leadership is not as dramatic as that of
transformational vertical leadership, Hypothesis 2 is still clearly supported.  Transactional leadership has been shown
to be a credible leadership style (Burns, 1978; Bass, 1985).  Avolio and Bass (2004) clarified that
transformational leadership does not replace transactional leadership.  Transactional leadership, in turn, is
ineffective without transformational leadership (Avolio & Bass). The two
styles together create a balanced, effective leadership profile, showing an
positive effect upon the emergence of shared leadership.

Once again, further analysis was
performed to determine whether the additional transactional factor, Management
by Exception-Active, correlated with transformational shared leadership.  Thought it was not expected to correlate,
it did have moderate correlation (.354). Since there is a need for a leader’s clear expectations about the attainment of
performance goals, Contingent Reward is strongly correlated with shared
leadership (.706).  However, a
leader’s Management-by-Exception: Active focus on mistakes and deviations
from standards is unexpectedly correlated with shared leadership (.354).  This refutes Pearce’s (1997)
controlling vertical leadership style and its negative relationship with
potency and shared leadership. Combining both types of transactional
leadership styles, contingent reward and management by exception-active (Bass,
1985), with directive and aversive leadership may have created an unintentional
barrier to determining the value of the transactional style's distinct role in
developing shared leadership.
Pearce included Management by Exception:
Active into the controlling leadership construct, along with the more negative
passive avoidant factors.  Again, transformational
leadership does not replace transactional leadership, while both develop others
to determine one's own course of action (Avolio & Bass, 2004).  Apparently, when the job includes
careful monitoring of deviation from standards, the vertical leader’s
attention to them has a relationship with the development of shared
leadership.

In
previous vertical and shared leadership research (Pearce, 1997), passive avoidant
leadership has shown the opposite effect as transformational leadership.  In this study, it was moderate
negatively correlated with shared leadership and therefore supports
Pearce’s findings. The results in Tables 25 and 26 demonstrate that waiting
for things to go wrong before taking action (Management-by-Exception: Passive =
-.309) and avoiding involvement when important issues arise (Laissez-Faire =
-.500 are ineffective ways to develop shared leadership.

Team Demographics and Shared Leadership

Hypotheses
3a states: There is a statistically significant positive relationship between
the team demographic variables of team maturity, familiarity, and proximity
with the development of shared leadership.  This hypothesis was partially supported
by the relationship of team familiarity and proximity with shared
leadership.

In Table 36, Pearson correlation coefficients show
some support for Hypothesis 3a.  A
moderate Pearson correlation between team familiarity (.397 at p <.01) and
shared leadership was found.  A weak
correlation between proximity (.202 at p <.05) and shared leadership also
partially confirmed Hypothesis 3a.  Perry,
Pearce, Sims, Jr. (1999) and Pearce & Sims, Jr., (2002) proposed that
proximity affects the development of shared leadership.  There was a weak positive relationship
between the two.  A Pearson
correlation of .055 for team maturity was without statistical significance and
so that part of Hypothesis 3a was not supported.  Though there have been several
propositions that the team characteristic of team maturity is a viable
independent variable positively affecting the development of shared leadership,
no such relationship was found (Pearce, 1997; Pearce & Sims, Jr,; Cox,
Pearce & Perry, 2004).

Having determined
the correlations between familiarity and shared leadership, a stepwise multiple
regression analysis was performed to determine a model of the independent
variables with the strongest effect upon the variability within the shared
leadership variable.  In Table 33,
after all vertical leadership and team demographic variables were entered into
the stepwise regression equation with shared leadership as the dependent
variable, team familiarity was the third variable to enter the regression
model.  Given the R-Square value of
.657 in Table 34, 1.6% of the variability within shared leadership can be
explained by team member familiarity. Figure 7 graphically demonstrates this
variability effect on shared leadership by team member familiarity.

Though
further research in the relationship between team member familiarity and shared
leadership has been encouraged, it has not been directly studied (Pearce, 1997;
Pearce & Sims, 2002; Cox, Pearce & Perry, 2004).  This study’s discovery of this
relationship is logically connected with the research connecting familiarity
with productivity (Goodman & Leyden, 1991), decision-making effectiveness
(Tuckman, 1965; Watson, et al, 1991), shared knowledge (Blickensderfer, 2000),
and shared task-focused mental models (Resick, 2004).  All of these should be logically present
for shared leadership to exist and so this study confirms this additional
relationship between the level of familiarity among team members with shared
leadership.

Hypotheses 3b states: There is a statistically
significant negative relationship between the team demographic variables of
team size and membership load with the development of shared leadership.  This hypothesis was not supported.

Table 30 shows Pearson correlation coefficients that
do not support Hypotheses 3b.  Review of correlations between team size
and team membership load with transformational shared leadership show positive
correlation values of .135 and .018 respectively, exceeding the .05 level of
significance. The hypothesis predicted negative correlations and so Hypothesis
3b is clearly not supported.

Though team effectiveness is related to the size of
the team (Peters & Waterman, 1982; Campion, et al, 1993; Pearce & Sims,
2002), no significant conclusion concerning its relationship with shared leadership
can be offered in this study.  Team
sizes may have already been set at an appropriate level to bring the necessary
amount of variability in the data sample.    The overall productivity
within new product teams has been reported as optimal when team size approaches
five to ten members (Peters & Waterman, 1982).  Most of the teams within the data sample
were within this optimal range.

Multiple team memberships and their numerous roles are
common (McGrath, 1991).  Though it
was projected that role stress, occurring from being placed on too many teams,
would negatively affect shared leadership’s emergence, the study did not
confirm this.  Membership on many
teams is typical of the high-tech organization that was involved in the
research.  The time allocated to
accomplish team goals must be reasonable. Time pressure, a result of team
member load, has been shown to be somewhat moderated by group potency (Gevers,
van Eerde, & Rutte, 2001).  When
working in teams is the normal operating structure of the organization, it may
be that membership load insignificantly influences share leadership.

Table 30 shows additional correlations among the
demographic variables. Team member familiarity is moderately correlated at the
.01 significance level, in descending order, with group potency (.422),
proximity (.415), transformational vertical leadership (.357), and
transactional contingent reward vertical leadership (.274).  Familiarity is weakly correlated with
team size (.198) at the .05 level of significance. Team member familiarity
appears to be an important independent variable in the number of correlations
it has with other variables.  It is
logical that as members understand each other’s values, skills, and
strengths, they increase their confidence and beliefs in each other’s
ability to achieve (group potency).
They can do so with face-to-face meetings and interaction (proximity),
which is encouraged and performance-monitored by the vertical leader
(transformational and transactional contingent reward leadership).  Team member proximity is moderately
correlated at the .01 level of significance with familiarity (.415) and potency
(.333) and weakly correlated at the .05 level of significance with
transformational vertical leadership (.177).  The rationale for the relationship
between team member proximity and familiarity, potency, and transformational
vertical leadership is similar to that of the discussion of team member
familiarity.  Team maturity is
weakly correlated at the .05 significance level with team size (.198) and familiarity
(.180). The longer the team operates together, the more they would better
understand one another and have a critical number of team members necessary to
accomplish their goals.

Group Potency’s Relationship with
Shared and Vertical Leadership

Hypothesis
4a:  There is a statistically
significant positive relationship between transformational vertical leadership
with group potency.  This hypothesis
is clearly supported.

In
Table 18, a Pearson correlation coefficient of .625 for group potency and
transformational vertical leadership at the .01 level of significance shows a
strong correlation. Having determined the correlations between group potency
and transformational vertical leadership, a stepwise multiple regression
analysis was performed to determine a model of the independent variables with
the strongest effect upon the variability within group potency.  After all vertical leadership, shared
leadership, and team demographic variables were entered into the stepwise
regression equation with group potency as the dependent variable, Table 22
shows only two variables entering the regression model, shared leadership and
team member proximity. Given that the R-Squares in Table 23 demonstrate that
shared leadership accounts for 57.6% and proximity accounts for 3.4% of the
variability within group potency, the relationship between transformational vertical
leadership and group potency is clearly limited to being positive correlated.

Hypothesis
4b states:  There is a statistically
significant positive relationship between transactional contingent reward
vertical leadership with group potency.
This hypothesis is clearly supported.

In
Table 18, a Pearson correlation coefficient of .558 for group potency and
transformational vertical leadership at the .01 level of significance shows a
strong correlation. Having determined the correlations between group potency
and transactional contingent reward vertical leadership, the aforementioned stepwise
multiple regression analysis was performed to determine a model of the
independent variables with the strongest effect upon the variability within
group potency.  As stated in the
previous discussion, Table 22 shows only two variables entering the regression
model, shared leadership and team member proximity. Transactional contingent
reward vertical leadership does not affect the variability of group
potency.  The relationship with
group potency is clearly limited to positive correlation.

Hypothesis
4c states:  There is a statistically
significant positive relationship between shared leadership with group potency.
This hypothesis is clearly supported.

In
Table 18, a Pearson correlation coefficient of .759 for group potency and
transformational shared leadership at the .01 level of significance shows a
strong correlation.  Having
determined the correlations between group potency and shared leadership, a
stepwise multiple regression analysis was performed to determine a model of the
independent variables with the strongest effect upon the variability within
shared leadership.  After all
vertical leadership, group potency, and team demographic variables were entered
into the stepwise regression equation with shared leadership as the dependent
variable, Table 19 shows group potency entering as the second variable into the
regression model.  Given the
R-Square value of .732 in Table 20, 12.0% of the variability within shared
leadership can be explained by group potency.

As discussed earlier for Hypothesis 4a, another
stepwise multiple regression analysis was performed with group potency as the
dependent variable.  After all
vertical leadership, shared leadership, and team demographic variables were
entered into the stepwise regression equation with group potency as the
dependent variable, only shared leadership and team member proximity entered
the model in Table 22.  Table 23
shows shared leadership and proximity accounting for 57.6% and 3.4% of the
variability within group potency.
This confirms that in addition to being positively correlated,
transformational shared leadership affects a significant portion of group
potency’s variability.  This relationship
suggests the graphical model in Figure 7.

Group
potency has been found to be related to vertical and shared leadership (Pearce,
1997), team performance (Guzzo, et al, 1993; Gevers, van Eerde, & Rutte, 2001;
Hecht, Allen, Klammer and Kelly, 2002; Lester, Meglino, & Korsgaard,
2002).  Given the close relationship
among the variables of vertical leadership, shared leadership, group potency,
and team effectiveness, the relationships among these variables in Figure 8 appears
to be logically connected.

The
relationship between team member proximity and group potency has not been
previously studied.  However, in
order to share mental models of task performance, which is correlated with
group potency (Resick, 2004), teams may better develop such models in close
geographical proximity with each other.
Additionally, since group potency is a collective belief within a team
that it can be effective (Guzzo, et al, 1993; Bligh, Pearce, & Kohles,
2006), members working in close proximity may better develop this collective
sense by frequent face-to-face meetings.

Following all
regression and path models, the logical model in Figure 7 supports both
transformational and transactional contingent reward vertical leadership acting
as independent variables to transformational shared leadership, with shared
leadership and team member proximity acting as mediating, independent variables
to group potency.

Team Leader and Members’ Self-Rating
of Team Effectiveness

Within
the Multifactor Leadership Quotient for Teams assessment (TMLQ), self-rated
team effectiveness surfaced some additional quantitative insights.  Similar to other studies where team
effectiveness or performance had been measured as the dependent variable, team
effectiveness was identified as the dependent variable.  Table 31 shows Pearson correlation
coefficients for all variables with moderate to strong correlations with team
effectiveness for SLALL (.657), TFALL (.603), POT (.587), and TA-1 (.483).
Moderate to low correlations with team effectiveness are FAM (.296), NUMB
(.258), and DUR (.241) at less than .01 level of significance.  PROX (.144) and LOAD (.000) were not
statistically correlated with team effectiveness.

Additional stepwise multiple regression analysis displayed
the variables that cause significant variance within the dependent variable of
team effectiveness in Table 32.  In
Table 33, the most influential of these variables was SLALL, with 43.2% of the
variability within team eff3ectiveness, followed by  DUR, causing another 4.2%, NUMB, with another
1.8%, and TFALL with an additional 1.6%  of the variability of team effectiveness.

The relationship of vertical and
shared leadership with team effectiveness supports Pearce’s (1997) study
that shared catalyzing leadership positively influences team
effectiveness.  Pearce and
Sims’ (2002) and Cox, Pearce, and Perry (2004) had also proposed that
shared leadership results in overall team effectiveness.  Within this organizational context, the
teams that are acknowledged as most effective are those that have the
organizational and leadership support necessary to sustain sufficient members
(team size) and longevity (team maturity).    Specifically, leadership
support includes the provision of resources from senior management down through
the level of team leader (Wageman, 1997).
Management should give team members the space, time, and support to
deliberate and work through the challenges facing teams as they mature and work
towards effectiveness (Stoner & Hartmann, 1993). This study appears to
support the prior research in the importance of properly staffing the team and providing
adequate time to accomplish team goals that results in perceptions of effectiveness.
.

Implications for
Theory

Shared leadership
is collectively held by all team members. "Shared leadership entails a
simultaneous, ongoing, mutual influence process within a team that involves the
serial emergence of all official as well as unofficial leaders" (Pearce
& Manz, 2005, p. 134).  It was
the intention of this research to demonstrate that shared leadership could
flourish within traditional leader-led teams when the optimal leadership style
was present.  The study confirmed that
shared leadership does not displace the role of vertical leader as was often
the case in self-managed teams.  This
study’s results agreed with the notion that while a team may have a
formal leader, leadership often shifts among team members depending upon the
circumstances, the needs, skills, and maturity of the team (Pearce
& Conger, 2003).  Whereas
strategic leadership's focus is most often the relationship between leader and
subordinate, the shared leadership form has received little research into its
own unique form of leadership processes.
Most leadership research has been concerned with granting subordinates
more delegated authority, rather than the development of shared leadership (Gordon
& Yukl, 2004).  The extant
shared leadership research, when compared with traditional leadership studies,
is minimal. Since shared leadership research appears to have flourished shortly
after the appearance of self-managed team research, the quantitative research
of shared leadership had been predominantly a study of leadership within
self-managed teams (Pearce, 1997; Cox, Pearce, & Perry, 2004).  That had been true until now.

The
emergence of shared leadership may never be fully predicted, however, an intention
of this research was to help define and validate those factors necessarily
present for such emergence in today’s more common traditional leader-led
teams.  The research succeeded in
doing so and has contributed to the body of shared leadership knowledge in the
following areas.

Shared Leadership Construct

There
has been little consensus for the quantitative measurement of the shared
leadership construct.  Though there
is no one accepted definition of shared leadership or way to measure it,
quantitative studies of shared leadership have been dominated by Pearce and
colleagues (Pearce, 1997; Perry, Pearce, & Sims, 1999; Pearce & Sims,
2002; Pearce, Sims, Cox, Ball, Schnell, Smith, & Trevino, 2003; Pearce & Conger, 2003; Pearce & Manz, 2005).  Pearce (1997) proposed the archetypes
used to assess vertical leadership could also have utility in assessing shared
leadership.  Pearce organized
directive, aversive, and transactional leadership behaviors into the
meta-dimensions of "vertical controlling" and "shared
controlling" leadership.  He
organized transformational and empowering leadership behaviors into
"vertical catalyzing" and "shared catalyzing" leadership.  In this present research, the
transformational style of shared leadership was used as the only shared
leadership construct. This represented the work of Avolio, Sivasubramaniam,
Murry, Jung, and Garger, (2003). The practicality of measuring, for the purpose
of developing, the less desirable transactional or passive avoidant forms of
shared leadership, as defined in the available models, was unimaginable. In
this study, transformational shared leadership, consolidated and defined by
three factors, was used synonymously with shared leadership.  These shared leadership factors are
Inspiring Leadership, Intellectual Stimulation, and Individualized
Consideration.  A new construct of
shared leadership, offered by Avolio, et al. is suggested and confirmed in this
research as a valid way to measure shared leadership in the future.  It further confirms its practicality
within traditional corporate teams.

Transformational Vertical Leadership

Burns (1978) had
stated that the transformational leader develops others to reach a higher
potential.  Shared leadership
enables this higher potential.  Though
Pearce’s (1997) research supported vertical catalyzing leadership’s
positive influence upon group potency and team effectiveness, he did not
directly measure its effect upon shared leadership. This present research has
confirmed that transformational vertical leadership is a key factor in the
development of shared leadership.  Avolio,
Bass and Jung (1996) suggest that a goal of transformational leadership is to
develop leaders or shared leadership within a group.  Within this study, vertical
transformational leadership, supplementing transactional leadership, developed
shared leadership within teams (Avolio & Bass, 2004).  Cox, Pearce, and Perry (2004) proposed a
shared leadership model as applicable to new product development teams.  Supporting shared leadership as a dependent
variable, Cox, et al. proposed the independent variables of vertical
leadership, team formation, the boundaries of the team and its members,
leadership support, and the level of empowerment. The positive effect of
vertical leadership was confirmed within this study.  Both forms of leadership are important ways
to develop this team leadership potential.  Ineffective or unsupportive vertical
leadership can be a barrier to effectively developing shared leadership.  Pearce (1997) found this controlling
form of vertical leadership to negatively affect the development of group
potency, but did not study its effect upon shared leadership.  Team leaders lacking in transformational
leadership and having passive avoidant leadership style did not positively correlate
with shared leadership within this present research.  These patterns, suggested by the
aforementioned researchers, have been confirmed within this research. With
transactional contingent reward leadership measured separately from other
controlling leadership styles, new insights into the utility of this style have
been reached.

Transactional Vertical Leadership

This
research confirmed the utility of transactional contingent reward leadership in
the development of shared leadership.
At a much lower correlation level, and yet unexpectedly, transactional
management by exception: active style was moderately correlated with shared
leadership in this study.  In the
high technical work performed by the teams in this study, a strong focus upon exceptions
to standards may explain some of this pattern.  Significant to prior research (Pearce,
1997), the way in which these variables are constructed and defined has a
significant and direct effect upon the results.  Within the technical organization
participating in this present study, team leaders must use both
transformational and transactional leadership style to be effective.  The transactional contingent reward
leadership style includes the setting and gaining agreement for team member
expectations (Bass, 1996).  Both
leaders and members are accountable for the work of the team.  "Leaders still have plenty of work
and remain accountable for the unit's performance.  But they must now encourage and build a
shared responsibility system, where the leader and direct reports collaborate in
the management of the unit" (Bradford & Cohen, 1998, p. 15).  Through this perspective, this research
confirmed both transactional contingent reward and transformational vertical
leadership are necessary to develop shared leadership.  Transactional management by exception:
active may play a minor and indiscernible role that would need further
study.

Team Demographic Variables

There have been
several past research calls for team demographic variables’ role in
developing shared leadership within different organizational contexts.  Perry, Pearce, and Sims (1999) proposed
a shared leadership model for developing empowered selling team effectiveness,
whereas team proximity, ability, maturity, diversity, and size affect the
development of shared leadership.
They further proposed that shared leadership could contribute to team
effectiveness via the development of team responses such as group potency.  This present research partially answered
their call in the area of proximity, maturity, size, and potency.

Pearce
and Sims (2002) suggest that future research might find that mature teams
possessing both technical and leadership skills might display more shared
leadership. This present research specifically targeted mature traditional
teams in a technical organization to test this proposal. This research
positively answered this research call.   They further suggested that shared
leadership emergence may be affected by "team skills, team member
familiarity, team member proximity, and team maturity" (Pearce & Sims,
p. 187).  Again, this research
specifically targeted this area.

Finally,
Cox, Pearce and Perry (2004) proposed that the team characteristics of
proximity, team size, members' ability, diversity, and maturity are viable
independent variables affecting the development of shared leadership.  Once again, in the area of proximity,
size, and maturity, this research sheds some new research light.  The results of each of these demographic
variables are discussed in the following.

Team Size

In
this research, no statistically significant negative relationship was found
between team size and shared leadership.
In fact, a positive relationship was found, however it was not
significant.  There was a weak,
significant correlation with group potency.  Most teams in this research were comprised
of a small number, with 25 of 33 teams having less than 10 members.  Optimal productivity has been reported
with team size of five to ten members (Peters & Waterman, 1982).  Only four teams had more than 12 members
in the study.  The fact that the
majority of teams were already properly comprised of a manageable number of
team members may have affected the results.  It may also be true that when other
variables are in effect, such as effective vertical leadership, the relatively small
variation in the range of team size had no significant effect.

The
overall effectiveness of teams has been compromised by large team size in the
research (Campion, et al,1993; Pearce & Sims, 2002).   Oppositely, team size as a
moderating variable, has been shown to have no effect on the relationships
among transformational leadership, team trust, and team commitment within
software development teams (Hsu, 2006).

The present research
showed a significantly positive effect, not a negative relationship, between
team size and team effectiveness.  In fact, 1.4 % of the variability within
team effectiveness was attributed to team size.  It is possible that in the organizational
environment of scarce resources, where members may be readily and frequently
redeployed from one team to another, maintaining a practical number of team members
is seen as a measure of overall effectiveness.  Whereas pursuing the quantitative
connection between team size and shared leadership was logically based upon
past research, this study was unable to confirm its existence.

Team
Maturity

As with team
size, there were similar results found in the team maturity variable’s
relationship with shared leadership and team effectiveness.  There was no statistically significant
relationship between team maturity and shared leadership. There was a
significant relationship between team maturity and team perception of team
effectiveness.  Generally, the prior
research has suggested that the longer a team works together, the more
effective it may be (Tuckman, 1965; Stoner & Hartmann, 1993).  This relationship was confirmed in this
research. The same organizational resource constraints as discussed and
proposed with team size may be in play here. The longer the team has been
together, the more organizational support it may have.  This perceived support may influence the
team’s own perception of its effectiveness.  There have been several propositions
that the team characteristic of team maturity is a viable independent variable
positively affecting the development of shared leadership (Pearce, 1997; Pearce
& Sims, 2002; Cox, Pearce & Perry, 2004).  Again, though this research study showed
a positive relationship with team effectiveness, it found no such relationship
between team maturity and the development of shared leadership.

Team
Member Familiarity

Of all the team demographic
variables, team member familiarity was the only variable to influence some of
the variability of the emergence of shared leadership. Though it accounted for
only 1.4% of the variability, its positive moderate correlation with shared
leadership was strongest of any demographic variables.  It was also positive moderately
correlated with team member proximity and more modestly so with team maturity. The
degree to which team members have worked together in the past within a team has
been linked to important team variables of productivity (Goodman & Leyden,
1991), decision-making effectiveness (Tuckman, 1965; Watson, et al, 1991),
shared knowledge and coordination (Blickensderfer, 2000; Resick, 2004).  Pearce and Sims (2002) specifically
challenged future research in team member familiarity’s effect on shared
leadership emergence.  This present
research confirms the importance of this variable in developing shared
leadership.  Improving team members’
knowledge and understanding of each other’s skills, abilities, and value,
often an important focus in teambuilding, appears to have important benefits to
teams wanting to develop shared leadership.

Team Member Proximity

There were many
calls from prior research to study team proximity (Perry, Pearce, & Sims,
1999; Pearce & Sims, 2002; Cox, Pearce & Perry, 2004).  It appeared that the relationship
between team proximity and shared leadership would be certain.  Logically, as team members communicate across
multiple locations, team members should have a greater dependency upon the
structures, communication, and direction set by the vertical leader.  In other words, geographical separation
of team members may prevent, or increase the difficulty for the development of
shared leadership.  Though it is has
been demonstrated that modern communication tools, such as videophone and
Internet-based electronic meeting software, may have favorable effects upon
team member ratings of satisfaction and productivity (Vanjani, 1996), geography
and its embedded culture makes the development of healthy team dynamics
challenging.  This research was
expected to validate a positive relationship between team proximity and the
development of shared leadership.  There
was a weak, but positive relationship with shared leadership and a moderate
correlation with team familiarity. Though there was some confirmation that teams,
which meet face to face, better develop shared leadership, team
proximity’s correlation with team member familiarity is important.  In this study, familiarity was a necessary
component for the development of shared leadership.  Proximity logically and statistically
supports familiarity.  Additionally,
the strength between proximity and group potency was much greater with 1.9% of
the variability of potency explained by proximity.

Team Membership Load

In organizations,
more demands are being placed on team members to do more with less.  Multiple team memberships are a common
occurrence.  It was hypothesized
that team membership load, measured by the number of teams to which each member
was assigned, would be negatively related with shared leadership and lower team
performance.  Typical of high-tech
organizations, role stress might occur when team members are placed on too many
teams.  Team members must perform
multiple tasks concurrently, which might further add to role stress and time
pressures (McGrath, 1991).  No
significant relationship was found between team membership load and any other
variable.  It is possible that the
demands placed upon team members within organizations today are ever-present
and significant, requiring all team members to operate effectively under such
stressful environments.
Additionally, operating within teams as a viable organizational
structure is the norm within high-tech organizations today.  Within this environment, measuring the
number of team memberships provides no significant conclusions.

Group Potency

This
study supported other research findings regarding group potency’s
relationship and other key variables of vertical and shared leadership.  Group potency, a collective construct,
is the collective belief within a team that it can be effective (Guzzo, et al,
1993; Bligh, Pearce, & Kohles, 2006).  This research supports Pearce’s
(1997) finding that both catalyzing vertical and shared leadership are
positively related with group potency.  Significant positive correlations with
group potency were found for transactional contingent reward, transformational
vertical, and shared leadership.
However, the evidence from stepwise regression modeling supports the
direction that vertical leadership influences the variability within shared
leadership, which in turn influences group potency and team effectiveness.  Team proximity also influences the
variability within group potency.  Prior
research also shows multiple and complex relationships with group potency
(Guzzo, et al; Pearce; Gevers, van Eerde, & Rutte, 2001; Hecht, Allen,
Klammer and Kelly, 2002; Lester, Meglino, & Korsgaard, 2002; Pearce,
Gallagher, & Ensley, 2002; Resick, 2004).  This suggests that vertical leadership,
shared leadership, team effectiveness, and group potency are closely
related.  Future studies of shared
leadership should include these variables.

Team Effectiveness

A strong relationship was found
between shared leadership and the teams’ perception about their own
effectiveness.  Additional
influencers to team effectiveness were transformational vertical leadership,
team maturity, and team size.  The
relationship of vertical and shared leadership with team effectiveness supports
Pearce’s (1997) study that shared catalyzing leadership positively
influences team effectiveness.  Pearce
and Sims’ (2002) assertion that these variables may be useful predictors
of team effectiveness is also supported.
Cox, Pearce, and Perry (2004) had further proposed that shared
leadership results in overall team effectiveness. Again, this study confirmed
all of this prior research.

Study
Implications

This research
anticipated shared leadership’s emergence under certain conditions of
vertical leadership, team demographics, and group potency.  Its focus upon vertical leadership-led
teams within high technology organizations, faced with tight deadlines and
changing priorities, was a genuine test of the ability and conditions under
which shared leadership might emerge.  Within this study, many of the team
leaders displayed leadership and yet, it is more than
an individual's ability that predicts leadership effectiveness.  Rost's (1995) definition of
leadership, "an influence relationship
wherein leaders and collaborators influence one another about real changes that reflect their mutual purposes"
(Rost, p. 134), suggests that the form and conditions under which leadership
emerges is complex.  This complexity
may lead to alternative leadership forms.
This study confirmed that within a complex, engineering-based, technical
organization, when a specific set of conditions are present, the probability
that shared leadership emerges increases.
When shared leadership is present, the likelihood for team effectiveness
also increases.

Today’s organizations are increasingly
becoming team-based and yet, shared leadership research within corporate
organizations has been limited.  The
challenges of assessing the leadership dynamics of teams involved in the
urgency of everyday goal achievement and organizational change made completing
this research difficult.  Based upon
this experience, it is understandable that much of the shared leadership
research is gained from academic settings, where data collection may be more
readily achieved.  This makes this
contribution to the body of shared leadership knowledge more
significant.

Of the five influencing organizational conditions,
proposed by Pearce and Manz (2005), under which shared leadership may emerge,
all of these exist in some form within high-tech organizations.  These factors are the level of urgency,
importance of employee commitment, the need for creativity and innovation, the
level of interdependence, and the degree of complexity. These conditions might
be necessarily present, in addition to the measured variables identified within
this study, to replicate these results.  Organizations without these cultural
conditions may not allow the emergence of shared leadership, in spite of the
leadership style.  This
study’s high-tech organization needs employees who are fully involved in
problem-solving and influencing self and peers.  Given the level of task complexity within
this organization, as in most high-tech organizations, one might expect more
than one individual, the vertical leader, to possess the knowledge and skills
necessary to deal with such complexity.

Given
evidence for the conditions under which shared leadership, group potency, and
team effectiveness may emerge, an important implication of the study is an
understanding of what other similar organizations might do to foster these
alternative leadership forms. Leadership development initiatives must support
the importance of the team leader’s role as facilitator and coach.  The team leader is a necessary role
model to facilitate the team development process and allow the team members to
contribute expert knowledge and skills to the tasks at hand (Pearce & Manz,
2005).  If organizations are to
benefit from shared leadership, it must promote its development by educating
its vertical leadership about its potential existence and benefits.  An organization may begin by assessing
and developing the transformational and transactional contingent reward
vertical leadership styles of its team leaders.  Training and developing leaders to
enhance their transformational and transactional contingent reward leadership
style would  likely accelerate the
development of shared leadership and team effectiveness.  Shared leadership could be further
enhanced by dedicating consulting assistance for team development.  After all, team member familiarity was
found to be a significant condition for shared leadership’s
emergence.  In addition to vertical
leadership skill development, team members must also develop leadership skills,
if shared leadership is to be developed within organizations.  In essence, leadership development must
be expanded to include shared leadership development.  Increasing the likelihood that some or
all of the significant team and leadership factors are present would not only
increase shared leadership, but also improve the overall team effectiveness as
well.

Assumptions and Limitations

In preparation of this study, several assumptions and limitations had
been identified.  Vertical
leadership was assumed as independent variable to shared leadership. Though leadership
is not unidirectional and is a complex interplay between vertical and shared
leadership (Rost, 1995; Yukl, 2002),
the use of stepwise regression analysis increased the confidence level of this
assumption.  Additionally, other
studies have hypothesized vertical leadership to be the independent variable,
which further increases confidence in this assumption (Pearce, 1997; Cox,
Pearce & Perry, 2004; Choi, 2006).

It
was assumed that within high-tech organizations, the teams' work would be
sufficiently complex and interdependent to enable the emergence of shared
leadership.  It was within this
context that shared leadership would be found within traditional, vertical
leadership-led teams.  The overwhelming
evidence for shared leadership’s emergence within this specific
organizational environment clearly mitigated the risk of this assumption.

Several
limitations had been identified prior to the study.  First, consensus for the construct and
resultant measurement of shared leadership has not been reached (Pearce,
1997).  This research used the most
recent validation studies for the assessment of shared leadership, the Team
Multifactor Leadership Quotient (TMLQ) (Avolio, Sivasubramaniam, Murry, Jung,
& Garger, 2003).  Hopefully, this
study’s use of the shorter five-factor shared leadership model contributes
to additional confidence in future research.  It is recognized that this one study,
though helpful, does not ensure consensus for the best way to measure shared
leadership.  However, it does build
credibility for describing and measuring shared leadership.

When
the focus of this study was first conceived, several team demographic variables
as well as group potency, were identified as independent variables to the dependent
shared leadership variable.  One
significant limitation stems from this study’s ability to identify all of
the variables that factor into the emergence of shared leadership.  Though significant correlations were
found, only one demographic variable, team member familiarity, entered the
regression model for shared leadership.
There were significant and real complexities in the relationships among
all of the leadership, demographic, group potency, and team effectiveness
variables that were unanticipated.
The interplay among these variables are so complex, it is anticipated
that whenever additional variables, not included in this study, are introduced,
new complexities will be uncovered.
Some of these variables, out of the scope of this study, might be team
structure, boundaries, leadership support, level of empowerment, members' ability,
and diversity (Cox, Pearce & Perry, 2004).  Whenever variables are deselected, some
important variables may be ignored.
This is a significant limitation. Other unidentified variables may be
unique to this high-tech organization.
Only future research within similar organizations may increase the
confidence in the replication of these complex relationships.

Lastly,
a significant limitation was the availability of teams for this research.
Measuring real teams’ leadership, as they attempt to accomplish the
rigors and complexities of an ever-changing business, posed some significant
barriers to participation.  While it
is believed that the number of team leaders, members, and overall teams comprised
a statistically valid sample size, additional teams would boost the confidence
level of the study.

Recommendations for Future Research

This shared
leadership research focused upon vertical leadership-led teams within high
technology organizations.  Since
this was a new foray into shared leadership research, there are a few logical
paths that this study should inspire and suggest.  The following are recommendations for
further research:

1.
Extend the research to include additional traditional
teams.

Vertical leader-led
teams should be assessed for shared leadership’s emergence within a
variety of organizational contexts.  This form of team, so common in
today’s organizations, has not been the common focus for shared
leadership research. More research is needed.

2.
Replicate the study within similar organizational
environments.

This study should
be conducted within other organizations facing some of the same environmental
conditions of urgency, employee commitment, need for innovation,
interdependence, and the degree of complexity (Pearce & Manz, 2005).  Again, these conditions, along with the
other leadership and demographic variables, may
lead to the alternative leadership form of shared leadership.  Additional studies should confirm that
within a complex, engineering-based, technical organization, when a specific
set of conditions are present, shared leadership may emerge.

3.
Extend
shared research to additional corporate settings.

Since shared leadership research within corporate
organizations has been limited, more research in this organizational context is
needed.  Moving beyond academic
settings would enhance our understanding and utility of shared leadership
in for-profit organizations.

4.      Further
the research with a longitudinal study of teams before and after leadership
development intervention.

Earlier,
it was suggested that organizations could benefit from shared leadership
through leadership and team development (Dew, 1995) as well as education for shared
leadership’s potential existence and benefits.  Team members’ development of an
increased sense of pride and purpose, recognition, and challenge can be best
influenced by attentive and supportive, results-oriented leaders (Rabby,
2001).  To develop shared
leadership, teams must develop the proper knowledge, skills, and authority to
make decisions (Herman, 1999).  True
measures of success are the actions and results achieved by teams.  Empirical measurement of shared
leadership and effectiveness before and after vertical and shared leadership
development would significantly enhance the importance, benefits, and focus of
such development initiatives. Invaluable insight would be gained by measuring
how and when critical incidences for vertical and shared leadership style
development have been achieved.

5.      Work
toward consensus for a shared leadership model.

Consensus
for the construct could be enhanced with future research using the five-factor
shared leadership model, a shorter version of the Team Multifactor Leadership
Quotient (TMLQ) (Avolio, Sivasubramaniam, Murry, Jung, & Garger,
2003).  More research and experience
with this model could build additional confidence in this shared leadership
construct, similar to the consensus for the group potency construct (Guzzo, et
al, 1993).

6.
Further study the relationship between team
characteristic and demographics with shared

leadership.

Any
future research should discover new relationship strengths in the area of team
demographics and characteristics.
It may be wise to limit the research to only a few key influential
variables that showed some relationships within this study to discover how they
influence shared leadership. Though significant correlations were found within
this study, team member familiarity and proximity had entered regression models
for shared leadership and group potency.
The influential nature of these independent variables may benefit from
further research. This may shed light upon the organizational investment in
team leadership and team development initiatives. It may also offer guidance on
the pros and cons of virtual teams as well as the actions necessary to overcome
any disadvantages associated with them. For example, could an initial proximal,
face-to-face meeting, designed to develop team member familiarity, mitigate the
risks associated with dispersed, virtual teams, having no team member
proximity?

The
possibilities for the inclusion of influential variables within future shared
leadership research are endless.  The
relationships among the leadership, demographic, group potency, and team
effectiveness variables are so complex that all future research in this area
should make valuable contributions to the study of shared leadership.

Conclusion

This
research has demonstrated that there is a significant relationship between both
transformational as well as transactional vertical leadership styles and the emergence
of shared leadership in traditional, leadership-led technical teams. Whereas
these vertical leadership styles were also positively related to the
development of group potency and team effectiveness, it appears that shared
transformational leadership is a more significant, efficacious pathway to group
potency and team effectiveness.  The
research confirmed all of the hypotheses proposing positive relationships
between vertical and shared leadership with group potency.

This
research also answered the call to better understand the relationships between
team demographic variables of team size, maturity, proximity, familiarity, and
team membership load and the development of shared leadership. It discovered
the significance and importance of team member familiarity and proximity with
shared leadership emergence. It also helped define the positive role of team
member proximity with group potency development.  Whereas team maturity and team size had
no significant relationships with shared leadership, they did relate to the
team’s perceptions of its own effectiveness.  In total, most of the proposed
hypotheses were confirmed or partially confirmed, with only one hypothesis rejected.
Several additional relationships
were discovered that support the ongoing discussion of shared leadership.

A
new context for shared leadership has begun, with the targeted focus of
vertical leader-led teams in high-tech organizations.  As anticipated, when leadership and
organizational conditions support its existence, the likelihood increases for
the emergence of shared leadership within traditional teams.

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APPENDIX
A. TEAM DEMOGRAPHIC/POTENCY QUESTIONNAIRE

1.  How many team members, including the
team leader, comprise your team?
(Team Size)  ____Number of
team members

2.  How long have you been a member of this team
in months? (Team maturity)

1) less than 6 months; 2) 6 months – 1 year; 3)
greater than 1 year – 2 years; 4) greater than 2 years – 3 years;
5) greater than 3 years.

3.  Compared to other teams, how well do you
know your team members? (Member familiarity)

0=Not at all, 1=
To a little extent, 2= To some extent, 3= To a great extent, 4= To a very great
extent

4.  How often do team members meet
face-to-face versus through electronic means (teleconferences, video, email,
electronic meeting software, etc.)?
(Team member proximity)

0=Not at all, 1=
Once in a while, 2= Sometimes, 3=Fairly often,  4=Frequently, if not all the time

5.  On how many teams, including this one,
are you currently an active, contributing member? (Team membership load)  ____ Number of teams

6.  This team has
confidence in itself.

0=Not at all, 1=
Once in a while, 2= Sometimes, 3=Fairly often,  4=Frequently, if not all the time

7.  This team
believes it can become unusually good at producing high quality work.

0=Not at all, 1=
Once in a while, 2= Sometimes, 3=Fairly often,  4=Frequently, if not all the time

8.  This team
expects to be known as a high-performing team.

0=Not at all, 1=
Once in a while, 2= Sometimes, 3=Fairly often,  4=Frequently, if not all the time

9.  This team
feels it can solve any problem it encounters.

0=Not at all, 1=
Once in a while, 2= Sometimes, 3=Fairly often,  4=Frequently, if not all the time

10.  This team
believes it can be very productive.

0=Not at all, 1=
Once in a while, 2= Sometimes, 3=Fairly often,  4=Frequently, if not all the time

11.  This team
can get a lot done when it works hard.

0=Not at all, 1=
Once in a while, 2= Sometimes, 3=Fairly often,  4=Frequently, if not all the time

12.  No task is
too tough for this team.

0=Not at all, 1=
Once in a while, 2= Sometimes, 3=Fairly often,  4=Frequently, if not all the time

13.  This team
expects to have a lot of influence around here.

0=Not at all, 1=
Once in a while, 2= Sometimes, 3=Fairly often,  4=Frequently, if not all the time

APPENDIX B. DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS FOR SHARED
TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP (SLALL) – MEMBERS & TEAM LEADER RATING

Team

ID

N

Mean

SD

Team

ID

N

Mean

SD

Team

ID

N

Mean

SD

1

4

3.38

.196

12

4

1.74

.113

23

5

3.19

.951

2

4

2.39

.670

13

3

2.66

.980

24

5

2.86

.823

3

4

2.66

.212

14

4

2.90

.785

25

5

3.45

.267

4

4

2.59

.323

15

4

2.21

.708

26

4

2.35

.633

5

4

2.48

.820

16

7

3.24

.632

27

5

3.36

.494

6

4

2.96

.365

17

4

2.77

.619

28

3

2.05

.372

7

6

2.96

.270

18

6

3.10

.197

29

4

3.39

.295

8

6

3.01

.579

19

3

3.15

.151

30

5

2.87

.097

9

3

2.89

.205

20

4

1.69

.923

31

4

2.28

.837

10

4

2.84

.325

21

4

3.05

.741

11

5

3.13

.255

22

4

2.82

.136

APPENDIX C.
DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS FOR VERTICAL TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP (TFALL)

Team

ID

N

Mean

SD

TFALL

(Members)

TFALL

(Members

&
Leader)

TFALL

(All

Raters)

TFALL

(Members)

TFALL

(Members

&
Leader)

TFALL

(All

Raters)

1

5

3.08

2.97

2.90

.189

.266

.285

2

5

2.97

2.76

2.76

.076

.413

.358

3

5

2.63

2.66

2.75

.236

.202

.262

4

5

2.58

2.49

2.50

.375

.361

.314

5

5

3.08

2.77

2.87

.846

.926

.830

6

5

2.98

3.04

3.17

.569

.477

.508

7

7

3.00

2.94

3.03

.308

.311

.365

8

6

2.98

2.97

2.97

.624

.559

.559

9

4

2.97

2.85

2.94

.460

.391

.364

10

5

2.97

2.96

2.95

.679

.554

.481

11

5

3.14

3.24

3.24

.221

.299

.299

12

4

2.28

2.50

2.50

.202

.464

.464

13

4

2.30

2.78

2.60

.495

.907

.827

14

4

2.73

2.74

2.74

.586

.478

.478

15

4

1.75

1.99

1.99

.433

.592

.592

APPENDIX C.
DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS FOR VERTICAL TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP (TFALL)
(CONTINUED)

Team

ID

N

Mean

SD

TFALL

(Members)

TFALL

(Members

&
Leader)

TFALL

(All

Raters)

TFALL

(Members)

TFALL

(Members

&
Leader)

TFALL

(All

Raters)

16

8

3.27

3.21

3.10

.581

.553

.595

17

4

3.07

2.90

2.90

.506

.531

.531

18

6

3.44

3.46

3.46

.323

.292

.292

19

3

2.70

2.72

2.72

.425

.301

.301

20

4

2.43

2.66

2.66

.076

.463

.463

21

4

3.67

3.59

3.59

.189

.221

.221

22

4

2.82

2.90

2.90

.275

.280

.280

23

5

3.11

3.11

3.11

1.049

.909

.909

24

5

3.19

3.01

3.01

.421

.539

.539

25

5

3.56

3.54

3.54

.399

.349

.349

26

4

2.67

2.64

2.64

.562

.463

.463

27

5

3.11

3.03

3.03

.450

.431

.431

28

3

2.20

2.28

2.28

.141

.176

.176

29

4

3.62

3.45

3.45

.302

.414

.414

APPENDIX C.
DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS FOR VERTICAL TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP (TFALL)
(CONTINUED)

Team

ID

N

Mean

SD

TFALL

(Members)

TFALL

(Members

&
Leader)

TFALL

(All

Raters)

TFALL

(Members)

TFALL

(Members

&
Leader)

TFALL

(All

Raters)

30

5

2.64

2.61

2.61

.328

.290

.290

31

5

2.72

2.65

2.79

.660

.555

.574

APPENDIX D.
DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS FOR VERTICAL TRANSACTIONAL LEADERSHIP (TA-1)

Team

ID

N

Mean

SD

TA-1

(Members)

TA-1

(Members

&
Leader)

TA-1

(All

Raters)

TA-1

(Members)

TA-1

(Members

&
Leader)

TA-1

(All

Raters)

1

5

3.50

3.44

3.30

.500

.427

.481

2

5

2.67

2.31

2.45

1.01

1.087

.991

3

5

2.50

2.62

2.60

.661

.595

.518

4

5

2.83

2.56

2.65

.144

.554

.518

5

5

3.25

2.75

2.85

.901

1.24

1.098

6

5

3.25

3.31

3.30

.250

.239

.209

7

7

2.95

2.96

2.89

.542

.485

.476

8

6

2.50

2.37

2.37

1.21

1.126

1.126

9

4

3.00

2.67

2.69

.353

.629

.515

10

5

3.25

3.37

3.35

.750

.661

.576

11

5

3.12

3.15

3.15

.433

.379

.379

12

4

2.33

2.50

2.50

.382

.456

.456

13

4

2.00

2.58

2.37

.707

1.127

1.010

14

4

2.67

2.62

2.62

.947

.777

.777

15

4

1.92

2.00

2.00

.629

.540

.540

APPENDIX D.
DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS FOR VERTICAL TRANSACTIONAL LEADERSHIP (TA-1)
(CONTINUED)

Team

ID

N

Mean

SD

TFALL

(Members)

TFALL

(Members

&
Leader)

TFALL

(All

Raters)

TFALL

(Members)

TFALL

(Members

&
Leader)

TFALL

(All

Raters)

16

8

3.46

3.39

3.34

.749

.705

.667

17

4

3.67

3.37

3.37

.144

.595

.595

18

6

3.44

3.00

3.00

.467

.418

.418

19

3

3.00

3.33

3.33

.530

.382

.382

20

4

2.42

2.69

2.69

.289

.591

.591

21

4

3.50

3.37

3.37

.749

.433

.433

22

4

2.92

3.00

3.00

.144

.204

.204

23

5

3.31

3.20

3.20

1.21

1.081

1.081

24

5

3.25

3.05

3.05

.645

.716

.716

25

5

3.50

3.50

3.50

.540

.468

.468

26

4

2.17

2.12

2.12

.764

.629

.629

27

5

3.11

2.95

2.95

.125

.112

.112

28

3

2.94

2.50

2.50

.000

.000

.000

29

4

3.50

3.31

3.31

.250

.427

.427

APPENDIX D.
DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS FOR VERTICAL TRANSACTIONAL LEADERSHIP (TA-1)
(CONTINUED)

Team

ID

N

Mean

SD

TFALL

(Members)

TFALL

(Members

&
Leader)

TFALL

(All

Raters)

TFALL

(Members)

TFALL

(Members

&
Leader)

TFALL

(All

Raters)

30

5

3.00

2.90

2.90

.540

.518

.518

31

5

2.42

2.37

2.65

.878

.722

.877

APPENDIX E. DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS FOR GROUP POTENCY (POT) -
MEMBERS & TEAM LEADER RATING

Team

ID

N

Mean

SD

Team

ID

N

Mean

SD

Team

ID

N

Mean

SD

1

4

3.41

.373

12

4

1.97

.607

23

5

3.27

.877

2

4

2.03

1.239

13

3

3.21

.711

24

5

3.00

.824

3

4

2.81

.161

14

4

2.97

1.033

25

5

3.97

.056

4

4

2.69

.297

15

4

3.12

.684

26

4

2.87

.395

5

4

2.56

1.120

16

7

3.30

.563

27

5

3.70

.473

6

4

3.22

.295

17

4

2.28

.739

28

3

2.33

.439

7

6

3.46

.452

18

6

3.46

.303

29

4

3.84

.187

8

6

2.96

.359

19

3

2.96

.072

30

5

3.37

.319

9

3

3.21

.688

20

4

1.94

.767

31

4

3.47

.553

10

4

2.87

.629

21

4

2.69

1.477

11

5

3.67

.464

22

4

3.00

.000