Shared Authentic Leadership in Research Teams: Testing a Multiple Mediation Model

Abstract

Research teams face complex leadership and coordination challenges. We propose shared authentic leadership (SAL) as a timely approach to addressing these challenges. Drawing from authentic and functional leadership theories, we posit a multiple mediation model that suggests three mechanisms whereby SAL influences team effectiveness: shared mental models (SMM), team trust, and team coordination. To test our hypotheses, we collected survey data on leadership and teamwork within 142 research teams that recently published an article in a peer-reviewed management journal. The results indicate team coordination represents the primary mediating mechanism accounting for the relationship between SAL and research team effectiveness. While teams with high trust and SMM felt more successful and were more satisfied, they were less successful in publishing in high-impact journals. We also found the four SAL dimensions (i.e., self-awareness, relational transparency, balanced processing, and internalized moral perspective) to associate differently with team effectiveness.

Team Emergent States: What Has Emerged in The Literature Over 20 Years

“…Team composition factors positively influencing team trust include member ability, integrity (Colquitt et al, 2007) and emotional intelligence (EI; Chang et al, 2012), while factors including demographic dissimilarity (Krebs et al, 2006) negatively impact team trust. Leadership factors including authentic (Hirst et al, 2016) and shared leadership (Guenter et al, 2017), and leader EI (Chang et al, 2012) also encourage team trust. Although less researched, there is evidence that team processes can both positively (e.g., social interaction; Wu & Lee, 2016) and negatively (e.g., team conflict; Langfred, 2007) impact team trust.…”

“…Research consistently shows team trust positively impacts team-level outcomes, including team attitudes (i.e., satisfaction, commitment), information processing (i.e., knowledge sharing, team learning), other TES (e.g., cohesion), and performance (Breuer et al, 2016;De Jong et al, 2016). While several factors mediate the relationship between team trust and performance (e.g., effort, De Jong & Elfring, 2010;monitoring, Langfred, 2004), team trust also mediates relationships between antecedent factors (e.g., shared leadership, Guenter et al, 2017) and team performance. Meta-analyses also consider moderators between team trust and performance such as task interdependence, authority differentiation (De Jong et al, 2016), and EI (Chang et al, 2012).…”

Temporal dynamics of shared leadership

“…Shared leadership can create a social context that facilitates cooperation (Guenter et al, 2017), teamwork behaviors (Aubé et al, 2018), and trust-building (Drescher et al, 2014; for a recent review see Zhu et al, 2018). Moreover, as teams utilize shared leadership as a means to structure their tasks, provide feedback, and build a positive social climate, they can develop a strong shared sense of purpose (Bergman et al, 2012;Mathieu et al, 2015) that helps to reduce ambiguities and provides clear goals and expectations.…”

The Authenticity of the Others: How Teammates’ Authenticity Relates to Our Well-Being

“…There might be concerns as to what extent findings from romantic relationships should be directly transferred to the work context, because work often involves the need to interact with others that were not voluntarily chosen as social partners, and the work context is much more instrumental than the romantic domain (Cropanzano & Mitchell, 2008; Gagné & Deci, 2005; Schneider, 1987). Yet, first findings in the work context (e.g., on authentic leadership) also support the idea of positive external effects of authenticity (Guenter, Gardner, McCauley, Randolph-Seng, & Prabhu, 2017; Ilies, Morgeson, & Nahrgang, 2005). Not only are authentic leaders supposed to positively affect follower well-being, they are also supposed to increase the positive effects of followers’ own resources.…”