Moderators of shared leadership: work function and team autonomy

Purpose – Previous studies show that sharing leadership in teams offers potential performance benefits across various contexts. This paper aims to investigate moderators of the effectiveness of shared leadership. In particular, it seeks to explore the moderating effects of team work function – manufacturing versus knowledge team work – and team autonomy.Design/methodology/approach – In order to test the hypotheses, the authors conducted hierarchical regression analyses and ran moderated two‐way regression analyses using a field sample of 552 employees comprising 81 teams in a Danish manufacturing company.Findings – Contrary to expectations, the results demonstrated a non‐significant relationship between shared leadership and team performance. However, as expected, work function significantly moderated this relationship such that shared leadership exhibited a negative relationship with manufacturing team performance and a positive relationship with knowledge team performance. Moreover, team autonomy was po...

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