The traditional "great man" approaches to leadership emphasize qualities of individual leaders for leadership success. In contrast, a rapidly growing body of research has started to examine shared leadership, which is broadly defined as an emergent team phenomenon whereby leadership roles and influence are distributed among team members. Despite the progress, however, the extant literature on shared leadership has been fragmented with a variety of conceptualizations and operationalizations. This has resulted in little consensus regarding a suitable overarching theoretical framework and has undermined developing knowledge in this research domain. To redress these problems, we provide a comprehensive review of the growing literature of shared leadership by (a) clarifying the definition of shared leadership; (b) conceptually disentangling shared leadership from other theoretically overlapping constructs; (c) addressing measurement issues; and (d) developing an integrative framework of the antecedents, proximal and distal consequences, and boundary conditions of shared leadership. We end our review by highlighting several new avenues for future research.
While a plethora of studies have examined the relationships between abusive supervision and outcomes, there is a lack of a comprehensive and systematic framework that integrates the consequences and moderators of abusive supervision. We fill the void in the abusive supervision literature through conducting a quantitative review. Based on a meta-analysis of 119 independent samples (N=35,239), we found that abusive supervision was related to subordinates' attitudes, well-beings, organizational justice perceptions, workplace behaviors, performance, and family-related outcomes. In addition, we found that power distance moderated the relationships of abusive supervision with subordinates' workplace behaviors and performance in Asia and North America. In addition, the relationships between abusive supervision and its consequences were contingent on subordinates' age, organizational tenure, and time spent with supervisors, and research design. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. We also thank Brent Scott and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful guidance and suggestions in the review process.
Research on abusive supervision has predominantly focused on the consequences for victims while overlooking how leaders respond to their own abusive behavior. Drawing from the literature on moral cleansing, we posit that supervisors who engage in abusive behavior may paradoxically engage in more constructive leadership behaviors subsequently as a result of feeling guilty and perceiving loss of moral credits. Results from two experience sampling studies show that, within leaders on a daily basis, perpetrating abusive supervisor behavior led to an increase in experienced guilt and perceived loss of moral credits, which in turn motivated leaders to engage in more constructive person-oriented (consideration) and task-oriented (initiating structure) leadership behaviors. In addition, leader moral attentiveness and moral courage strengthen these indirect effects by amplifying leaders' awareness of their immoral behavior and their willingness and determination to make reparations for such behavior. Our research contributes to the theoretical understanding of leaders' responses toward their own abusive supervisor behavior and provides insights into how and when destructive leadership behaviors may, paradoxically, trigger more constructive behaviors. (PsycINFO Database Record
Although destructive consequences for subordinates have featured prominently in the abusive supervision literature, scholars have insinuated that supervisory abuse may temporarily yield functional results. Drawing from research on motive attribution tendencies that underlie abusive supervision and the control perspective of repetitive thought, we develop and test a multilevel theory that delineates both functional and dysfunctional subordinate responses to daily abusive supervisor behavior. We posit that when subordinates generally attribute abusive supervision to performance promotion motives, abusive supervisor behavior during the day leads to task reflexivity that night, translating into within-subordinate increases in next-day task performance. In contrast, when subordinates generally attribute abusive supervision to injury initiation motives, abusive supervisor behavior during the day instead leads to rumination that night, resulting in within-subordinate increases in next-day leader-directed deviance. Results from 2 experience-sampling studies provide support for these predictions. By providing a more fine-grained understanding of both the adaptive and maladaptive consequences of daily abusive supervisor behavior, our research, together with prior studies, suggests that the short-lived instrumental outcomes of abusive supervisor behavior carry a substantial price, despite managers’ illusion that acting in an abusive manner could be a feasible influence tactic.
Research on leader-member exchange (LMX) has predominantly taken a dyadic relationship perspective to understand the differences in overall exchanges across leader-member dyads, while neglecting the within-dyad exchange dynamics across a series of episodic resource transactions. Drawing from the literature on equity and reciprocity principles of social exchange, we develop and test a model of leader-member episodic resource transactions that delineates the momentary psychological mechanism and the boundary condition under which episodic resource contribution surplus generates member subsequent reciprocations. Multilevel polynomial regression analyses of 600 episodic exchange responses from 73 employees show that resource contribution surplus in an exchange episode increased state work engagement immediately following the episode and member resource contribution in the next episode by evoking member momentary sense of obligation to reciprocate. Additionally, the betweendyad LMX relationship quality attenuated these effects by reducing the likelihood to feel obligated to reciprocate due to episodic resource contribution surplus. Our research highlights the microdynamic transaction nature of the exchanges between leaders and members and provides insight into how leader-member dyads exchange resources in episodic interactions.
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