Observing leadership as behavior in teams and herds – An ethological approach to shared leadership research

Linking shared leadership with pharmaceutical team sales performance in Pakistan: a dual mediation model

Purpose

The pharmaceutical retail industry faces leadership challenges, emphasizing the importance of a mechanism to support sales managers. This paper aims to demonstrate how shared leadership (SL) might improve team performance (TP), with knowledge sharing (KS) and psychological safety (PS) serving as dual mediation effects.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors used social learning theory (SLT) to support their hypotheses. Using a purposive sampling technique, 440 respondents (65 leaders and 375 team members) from 65 pharmaceutical sales teams in Pakistan were obtained through data collection from dyad sources. The authors also used partial least square-structured equation modeling (PLS-SEM) using SmartPLS 3.3.9 to assess the measurement model and the direct paths testing. The authors also used PROCESS macro version 4 to examine dual mediation effects.

Findings

The results revealed that SL does not directly impact TP; rather, it depends on the dual mediating mechanisms of KS and PS.

Originality/value

This is an initial attempt to establish a conceptual model based on SLT, with KS and PS acting as dual mediation mechanisms. This research contributes to the current knowledge of team leadership by concentrating on how SL approaches might promote TP in the pharmaceutical sector.

Looking within: a longitudinal qualitative analysis of shared leadership behaviours in organisational teams

Purpose

To date, empirical research on shared leadership (SL) has been dominated by quantitative studies of antecedents and outcomes, frequently in simulated environments. Consequently, there have been few authentic accounts of how SL is practiced within organisational teams. Underpinned by shared leadership theory and leadership behaviour theory, this paper aims to provide a fine-grained view of the SL behaviours exhibited by team members over time, in five organisational teams in Ireland.

Design/methodology/approach

This longitudinal qualitative study uses critical incident technique, semi-structured interviews and participant diaries to explore SL behaviours emerging in five teams over time.

Findings

SL became widespread over time in each team, with almost all (96%) team members exhibiting SL behaviours. Ten different leadership behaviours were exhibited, indicating that SL permits a wide variety of leadership behaviours to be expressed. Some leadership functions were rarely or never fulfilled by team members (team composition, performance monitoring and resource allocation), suggesting that these leadership behaviours are not amenable to sharing.

Practical implications

This paper provides an insight into how SL could be used to increase the leadership capacity in team-based organisations.

Originality/value

This paper adds depth to the understanding of SL, revealing the specific behaviours underlying this approach, expanding our understanding of the micro-dynamics at play in SL processes.

Nexus between shared leadership, workplace bullying, team learning, job insecurity and team performance in health care

Purpose

The primary objectives of this paper are to examine the mediating effect of team learning (TL) in the relationship between shared leadership (SL) and team performance (TP), to investigate the important contingencies-moderating role of workplace bullying in the relationship between SL and TL and to investigate the moderating role of job insecurity in the relationship between TL and TP in health-care organizations.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on the social learning theory, this study used the aggregation approach to collect data, by using a structured questionnaire and the purposive sampling technique, from 223 respondents (60 leaders and 174 team members) of 60 sales teams from the top 10 pharmaceutical companies. A structural equation modeling on SmartPLS 3.2.9. was then used for analyzing the data collected.

Findings

The results indicate that SL significantly affects TP and that TL partially mediates this relationship. Workplace bullying has a significant impact as it reduces the effect of SL on TL and has a significant impact on TL. On the other hand, job insecurity has positively influenced TL and TP.

Originality/value

One of the first studies in the Pakistan health-care producer context used social learning theory to develop a contingency model based on important contingencies (workplace bullying and job insecurity). The study contributes to the existing literature on team leadership, highlighting how leadership can be translated into team performance.

A Bibliometric and Visual Analysis of Environmental Behavior Research

Environmental behavior has become one of the most important research areas in the field of sustainable development in recent years. Based on 818 papers on environmental behavior in the Web of Science database from 2002 to 2020, this paper uses CiteSpace software to analyze the trends in publication, subject categories, influential authors and journals, countries, and institutional collaborations. The results show that environmental behavior research has steadily increased over the past 19 years and has gradually achieved diversity and intersection in research subjects. The research on environmental behavior is mainly distributed in the United States, China, and European countries, with the United States being the largest contributor in the field and at the center of the institutional collaboration network. The present research hotspots are as follows: the concept of environmental behavior, factors affecting environmental behavior, the dimension division of environmental behavior, and the construction of a sustainable environmental behavior model. The sustainable development, predictive environmental behavior indicators, factors that affect environmental behavior, and the construction of theoretical models of environmental behavior will become future research trend.

Teams in the wild are not extinct, but challenging to research: A guide for conducting impactful team field research with 10 recommendations and 10 best practices

While there is no shortage of calls for research to study management concepts within organizations, there is far too little guidance on how to accomplish this feat. Conducting research in the field is especially important within the domain of organizational team research. Accordingly, we seek to provide an understanding of the current state of the organizational team field research literature and highlight recommendations and best practices. As such, we identified 10 recommendations and 10 best practices through three methods: (1) a literature review, (2) a survey of individuals who have published team field research, as well as some of the most impactful scholars investigating organizational team phenomenon, and (3) a set of interviews with practitioners in positions that can grant field access to researchers. By implementing this multi-pronged approach, we were able to incorporate multiple stakeholder voices so as to fully understand the value and ideal process for scientist-practitioner endeavors.