Summary

Over the past three decades, research on shared leadership has flourished across a myriad of academic disciplines. In this time, researchers have offered clarity into the antecedents, consequences, and moderators of shared leadership—while also considering measurement and conceptualization questions that are foundational to this discipline. Shared leadership has suffered from the proliferation of definitions, construct labeling, and measurement approaches. Despite this proliferation, meta-analyses have tended to define shared leadership as a dynamic and emergent phenomenon whereby leadership responsibilities are distributed across team members. Scholars have commonly used two different approaches to measuring shared leadership—the aggregate and social network approaches—both of which have garnered criticisms.

Research on the nomological network of shared leadership has outlined antecedents, consequences, and moderators. Scholars have demonstrated that the composition of team members (e.g., team diversity and team personality), the properties of the team (e.g., psychological safety and intrateam trust), and the properties of the formal leader (e.g., leader humility and empowering leadership) can each impact the propensity of teams to share leadership. Shared leadership has been found to impact several proximal (e.g., team satisfaction, team resilience, team confidence, team conflict) and distal factors (e.g., team learning, team performance, team creativity, team proactive behavior). Lastly, temporal considerations, methodological factors, and characteristics of the team or task have each been found to moderate the nomological network of shared leadership. Several future areas of research inquiry include the downsides of shared leadership, cross-cultural implications, multilevel considerations, and technological advancements.