اثربخشی رهبری به اشتراک گذاشته شده در تیم های مستقل حرفه ای

Firms make increasingly use of independent professional teams, i.e. teams that are staffed with self-employed experts with high levels of entrepreneurial orientation. As independent professional teams are regularly self-managed, they rely on all team members sharing leadership responsibilities. Existing theory on shared leadership silently assumes that team members always welcome influence by their fellow team members. However, we argue that independent professionals make conscious decisions regarding whether or not to adhere to other team members’ influence attempts. According to social exchange theory, individual behavior is contingent on rewarding actions from others. In this vein, adherence to social influence by other team members has to be seen as rewarding for followership to occur. Applying social exchange theory, we thus point to the importance of taking a leader, a follower and a relationship perspective to understanding shared leadership effectiveness (i.e. actual social influence) in independent professional teams. From a leader-perspective, it is perceived responsibility for team outcomes driving individual influence attempts. From a follower-perspective, on the other hand, it is the appreciation of such attempts leading to their acceptance. Jointly, influence attempts and influence acceptance increase shared leadership effectiveness. Finally, from a relationship-perspective, there are three stages of relationship quality development, i.e. calculus-, knowledge-, and identification-based relationship that contribute to shared leadership effectiveness.

Recent developments in the software industry point to the increasing importance of independent professionals, i.e. self-employed experts with high entrepreneurial orientation (Bidwell and Briscoe, 2009, Gassmann, 2006 and Kolvereid and Isaksen, 2006). Reutax, for example, an internationally acting staffing company with annual revenue of about 145 million dollars in 2011 (www.reutax.com) builds its intermediary business on a pool of 100.000 independent software experts. Dependent on the task requirements of the customer, Reutax identifies and staffs the best suited independent professionals to a software company’s project (Mowshowitz, 1997). The result are project teams that consist partly, and in some cases exclusively, of independent professionals contracted by a company for a specific project, while intermediaries like Reutax serve as a broker between the organization looking for temporary help and the independent professional. However, this development toward an increased use of independent professionals seems to be not only relevant for software development, but also other knowledge intensive industries, such as consulting (see for example a-connect, a globally acting independent consultant staffing company www.aconnect.com). From the company’s perspective, such independent professionals provide a rich source of outside knowledge as well as a reservoir to competently staff teams in peak times when their full-time staff is otherwise committed (Drucker, 1992). Due to their high levels of expertise and experience (Bidwell and Briscoe, 2009, Eppler and Sukowski, 2000 and Hoegl and Schulze, 2005), teams with independents professionals are mostly self-managed (O’Connell, Doverspike, & Cober, 2002), i.e. they do not have a formal project leader (Chambers et al., 2010, McCalman and Paton, 2010 and Renn, 1998). Coordination between independent professionals therefore is likely to be achieved through shared leadership (Erez et al., 2002 and Pearce, 2004), which is defined as a dynamic, interactive influence process among peers in which the objective is to lead one another to the achievement of group goals (Pearce & Conger, 2003). However, in teams with independent professionals, shared leadership might follow different rules than in traditional teams. Independent professionals most often deliberately choose to work independently, rather than in a set employment relationship. Often, they have gained several years of work experience being employed in firms, but then decide to leave such more secure positions in order to gain autonomy (Lumpkin & Dess, 1996). However, although they focus on their own positive outcomes, independent professionals regularly depend on the collaboration and coordination with the other team members (Stewart & Barrick, 2000). Effective leadership in project team occurs if one party exerts influence and the other party is willing to accept this influence (Chaleff, 2008). Shared leadership effectiveness thus refers to the coincidence of influence exertion by one team member toward a specific fellow team member and the acceptance of that influence attempt by the targeted team member. Most definitions of leadership only include the first aspect (see overview of leadership definitions in Yukl, 2005), silently assuming that social influence by the formal leadership is accepted by the subordinate. Recently, literature on leader influence strategies’ effectiveness (Fu et al., 2004a, Fu et al., 2004a and Fu et al., 2004b) goes one step further, pointing to employees’ subordination being a matter of degree rather than being a naturally given reality. The role of the follower in enabling leadership effectiveness has consequently gained more interest recently (Collinson, 2006, Hollander, 1992, Howell and Shamir, 2005, Johnson and Dipboye, 2008, Kelley, 2004 and Zhu et al., 2009). Nevertheless, most research either focuses on one or the other perspective. Even concepts of shared leadership in traditional in-house teams have mainly been considered from the influencing perspective with researchers implicitly assuming ‘silent’ (or unquestioning) followership, given the common organizational context and an informal (or even formal) status hierarchy within it. This assumption, however, is likely challenged as independent professionals get involved. Being independent-minded, they evaluate other parties’ contributions in a collaborative project team and are likely to reject influence attempts by other team members, if they do not perceive it to be beneficial for their own work in the project. Disentangling the interplay between leading and following in independent professional teams, we offer a more fine grained view on shared leadership effectiveness in teams, which so far has been neglected. Instead, extent research on shared leadership has focused on the sources and strength of shared leadership, applying a social network perspective (with a focus on who is exerting influence), as well as a leadership styles perspective (with a focus on how influence is exerted) ( Carson et al., 2007, Mehra et al., 2006, Pearce, 2004, Pearce and Conger, 2003 and Pearce and Manz, 2005a). We argue that the mechanisms of shared leadership in independent professional teams should be analyzed through a social exchange lens ( Blau, 1964, Cropanzano and Mitchell, 2005 and Homans, 1958). In particular, we argue that leader-member-exchange ( Dienesch and Liden, 1986 and Sparrowe and Liden, 1997), which particularly distinguishes the leader, the follower, and a the relationship perspective of leadership (Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995), offers important insights into the development and effectiveness of shared leadership in independent professional teams. Although Hickman (2010) has pointed to the relevance of social exchange theory for shared leadership theorizing, a detailed concept has not yet been elaborated. Conceptualizing shared leadership from a social exchange perspective (Dockery and Steiner, 1990, Pellegrini et al., 2010 and Seers et al., 1995) in the domain of independent professional teams, this article offers contributions to shared leadership and to entrepreneurship theory. We offer new insights into shared leadership processes by distinguishing leader, follower, and relationship perspective. Taking a leader perspective, we aim at specifying the broad term of influence within our domain, following Lowe (2006) call to define what is influenced by whom. We therefore show that for independent professional teams, the area of influence is determined by one team member’s possible contribution to another’s task accomplishment. Second, taking a follower perspective, we reason that team members evaluate the potential benefit of adhering to the advice given and then decide whether or not to adapt own behavior, rather than simply demonstrating compliance (Collinson, 2006 and Kelley, 1992). Third, taking a relationship perspective, we contribute to the conceptualization of shared leadership development over time, as demanded by Carson et al. (2007), by specifying the construct of a relationship quality. Taking a social exchange perspective, we consider advice from other team members as valuable input to increase one’s own task performance. Regarding shared leadership initiatives as valuable ‘services’ embedded in reciprocal exchange processes between peers, with leaders and followers being senders and recipients linked by a shared leadership exchange relationship, we explain exchange relationships based on calculus, knowledge, and identification (Lewicki & Bunker, 1996). As concerns entrepreneurship theory, contributions with regard to leadership have primarily focused on individuals’ entrepreneurial leadership behavior. Contributing authors find evidence for the effectiveness of certain leadership behavior, such as authentic leadership (Hmieleski, Cole, & Baron, 2012) and visionary leadership behavior (Ruvio, Rosenblatt, & Hertz-Lazarowitz, 2010). Others (please see exemplary Gupta et al., 2004 and Hmieleski and Ensley, 2007) go one step further arguing for entrepreneurial leadership to be distinct from other types of leadership. In this vein Gupta et al. (2004) argues for entrepreneurial leadership to include the following activities: (1) specifying highly challenging but realistic outcomes, (2) absorbing uncertainty, (3) path clearing, (4) building commitment, (5) specifying limits. However, while individual entrepreneurship behaviors have been specified, team-level entrepreneurial leadership has received much less attention. Among the few contributors, Hmieleski et al. (2012) point to specific leadership behaviors in new venture top management teams, such as shared authentic leadership. Shared leadership effectiveness, however, has not yet been considered. With the increasing relevance of independent professionals (Allred et al., 1996, Birley, 1985 and Kolvereid and Isaksen, 2006), this work offers two contributions to entrepreneurship theory. On the one hand, independent professional teams are a growing segment of entrepreneurs in many countries. This research helps identify an important conceptual underpinning (i.e., shared leadership) for understanding successful exchange relationship at the project level (Hmieleski et al., 2012). On the other hand, it also offers insights into how start-up companies that are trying to augment their limited resources with the more flexible hiring of independent professionals can better structure the leadership processes in joint projects to ensure that they fully utilize the help from the independent professionals. Elaborating on shared leadership in the domain of independent professionals, we thus contribute to entrepreneurship theory by pointing to independent professionals as entrepreneurial workforce and how to lead them.

Our analysis makes contributions to three different fields of theory, i.e. entrepreneurship theory, shared leadership theory, and social exchange theory. Entrepreneurship theory In line with Randøy and Goel (2003), we argue for entrepreneurial leadership behavior to differ from traditional leadership behavior. Even further, we argue that these differences appear not only in hierarchical relationships between formal leaders and their subordinates, but also in teams. Team-based leadership behaviors in entrepreneurial teams, such as shared leadership, are thus likely to differ from those in traditional teams. As these teams generally are self-managed, shared leadership as a team-based leadership approach offers a promising pathway for team-level entrepreneurial leadership. In this vein, we argue that besides identifying relevant entrepreneurial leadership behaviors in teams (please see Muethel & Hoegl, 2011 for a comprehensive review of specific shared leadership behaviors in teams), it is important to understand shared leadership effectiveness in these teams. As independent professionals often chose to leave their former company because they wish to be independent and work autonomous, it is likely that individual professionals do not necessarily welcome shared leadership initiatives by others. Specifying conditions that make shared leadership initiatives to be seen as a valuable good is thus contributing to leadership development in independent professional teams. With entrepreneurial teams becoming more and more prevalent, we thus point to an important advancement of team-level leadership theory in the field of entrepreneurship. Shared leadership theory Specifying shared leadership behavior in independent professional teams, we contribute to context-specific leadership approaches, which several authors have recently demanded (Boal and Hooijberg, 2000 and Porter and McLaughlin, 2006). Thereby, we tie in with Osborn, Hunt, and Jauch (2002), arguing that leadership does not take place in a vacuum, but in specific contexts which significantly influence leadership behaviors and outcomes. With independent professional teams gaining more and more importance, our conceptual work has implications for shared leadership theory, addressing independent professionals’ strive for autonomy. In particular, we shed more light on the powerful role of followers in the development of shared leadership in independent professional teams. Only if followers are willing to adhere to influence attempts then shared leadership is becoming an effective mechanism of leadership in independent professional teams. Pointing to independent professionals potentially rejecting other team member’s influence, we offer a more fine grained view on shared leadership effectiveness in independent professional teams. Potential shared leadership initiative rejection has not yet been considered in shared leadership theory. However, it is particularly important as it opens the research field to a very important aspect of leadership theory, i.e. the risk of leadership failure (Macmillan, Siegel, & Narasimha, 1985). Social exchange theory Following Seers and colleagues (Seers, 1989 and Seers et al., 2003), we argue social exchange between peers to positively influence shared leadership effectiveness. However, while these authors focus on teamwork-related social exchanges, such as coordination of individual contributions to the team task (Seers, 1989), we emphasize the importance of an exchange of active influence in terms of shared leadership. The present research thus offers implications for social exchange theory by specifying social exchange services in the context of independent professionals. Since active influence is dependent on the responsiveness of the independent professional addressed, influencing attempts cannot be imposed but have to be accepted by the receiver. Advice thus needs to be recognized by the addressee as beneficial to task performance in order to be perceived as a valuable service. We thus point to adapt existing exchange norms, such as reciprocity, to our context, arguing that it is not immediacy, but the relevance (of approaching other team members) that fosters shared leadership exchanges. As such, our research implies that the context can also influence the operationalization of exchange norms. Further research focusing on the development of context-specific social exchange theory profit from these insights.