Original Research

Leadership behaviour that facilitates shared leadership emergence in internationally dispersed non-formal teams

Jandre van Zyl, Karl Hofmeyr
South African Journal of Business Management | Vol 52, No 1 | a2695 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.4102/sajbm.v52i1.2695 | © 2021 Jandre van Zyl, Karl Hofmeyr | This work is licensed under CC Attribution 4.0
Submitted: 10 May 2021 | Published: 22 September 2021

About the author(s)

Jandre van Zyl, Gordon Institute of Business Science, University of Pretoria, Johannesburg, South Africa
Karl Hofmeyr, Gordon Institute of Business Science, University of Pretoria, Johannesburg, South Africa

Abstract

Purpose: Globalisation and the increased complexity of organisations create the need for alternative leadership approaches that can harness the collective intellectual capital that exists within the dispersed employees of organisations.

Design/methodology/approach: This qualitative study explored how shared leadership can be facilitated in internationally dispersed non-formal teams through increased team connectedness, leader humility, empowering leadership, participative leadership and quality leader-member exchanges. The study explored the perspectives of 12 purposively sampled internationally dispersed team members, who represented three different functional nonformal teams.

Findings/results: As dispersion of teams increases, some traditional leadership approaches become less effective. Shared leadership, however, has greater effects on team performance when team dispersion increases.

Practical implications: The study offers a theoretical framework of leadership in internationally dispersed non-formal teams, which serves as a basis for future empirical research. It provides leaders of teams and organisations, as well as human resource practitioners with guidance on how to achieve the benefits of shared leadership of teams in this context. Participants represented nine nationalities, dispersed across eight countries, on four continents.

Originality/value: Studies into shared leadership have increased over the past decade; however, the antecedents that facilitate shared leadership are still not exhaustive, and the majority of studies have been in co-located and formal teams. This study provides insight into how non-formal leaders can facilitate the emergence of shared leadership in the context of dispersed, non-formal teams.


Keywords

organisational complexity; shared leadership; internationally dispersed teams; non-formal teams; organisational structure

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Crossref Citations

1. Leveraging Intellectual Capital Management in Virtual Teams: What the Covid-19 Pandemic Taught Us
Georgiana Cristea, Elena Dinu
Management Dynamics in the Knowledge Economy  vol: 10  issue: 2  first page: 106  year: 2022  
doi: 10.2478/mdke-2022-0008