A Model of Leadership Transitions in Teams

Abstract

Teams with shared leadership arrangements are ubiquitous in twenty-first century organizations. Although transitions in leadership are a common and key feature of such teams, there is little insight into how and when leadership arrangements transition over time. Bridging the shared leadership and team adaptation literatures, we present a model of Leadership Transitions in Teams to describe the adaptive process through which teams intentionally modify the existing leadership arrangement. The basic assumption underlying this model is that leadership transitions occur when there is a mismatch between the team’s needs and its current leadership arrangement. Such a mismatch results from an anticipated or observed change. If it is anticipated, team members can democratically discuss and try out a new leadership arrangement, preventing mismatch and thus lowered team effectiveness. In contrast, if the mismatch has already occurred, teams are more likely to adopt a less democratic process—either a coalition-based or intervening-based process—to change the leadership arrangement in their team to counteract faltering team effectiveness. We propose that the ways in which leadership transition episodes can unfold and relate to team effectiveness will depend on the type (determined by the timing of the leadership transition episode in relation to the change), approach (determined by the extent to which there is consensus on if and how to change the leadership transition episode), and boundary conditions of leadership transition episodes. We advance an agenda for research on leadership transitions in teams and outline practical implications for teams with shared leadership structures.

Leaders, Conflict, and Team Coordination: A Relational Leadership Approach in Temporary Organizations

“…Lean upon Socio-Psychological theories (hereinafter referred to as 'SPTs') (Maslow 1943;Festinger 1954;Baumeister and Leary 1995), which assert that individuals and teams are interlinked, we adopted an integrative theoretical approach that fuses conflict management and relational leadership concepts in the context of the TOs formed to execute construction projects. This research also addresses the need for further explanation of conflict management in TOs with task interdependence, such as construction teams, as highlighted by Upadhyay (2021), Rispens, Jehn, andSteinel (2021), andMarques-Quinteiro et al (2022). Additionally, we focus on multicultural TOs in Malaysia, which present cross-cultural management challenges (Goetz, Wald, and Freisinger 2021).…”

“…Consequently, the coordination of project teams in TOs is a prominent challenge for project managers and leaders (Sanchez-Manzanares et al 2020). This situation has led to a call for competent leadership practices in TOs among project managers (Fellows et al 2002;Marques-Quinteiro et al 2022;Garengo and Betto 2022;Delmas and Pekovic 2017).…”

“…We analyse the moderating role of the within-nationality cultural background of leaders, as prior studies suggest that it might play a role in the effective coordination of complex social systems (Love, Edwards, and Irani 2008;Chung, Ko, and Kim 2020;Marques-Quinteiro et al 2022), which is one conception of construction projects as TOs that limited research has been performed around it. Our study also addresses the research gaps highlighted by Marques-Quinteiro et al (2022), Joseph and Van Buren (2021), Ojiako et al (2023), and Garengo and Betto (2022) regarding supportive climate, culture, team coordination, leadership, and team performance in TOs. It aims to advance the model of relational leadership behaviour in multicultural TOs.…”