Leadership as an Emergent Feature in Social Organizations: Insights from A Laboratory Simulation Experiment

A Model of Leadership Transitions in Teams

Teams with shared leadership arrangements are ubiquitous in twenty-first century organizations. Although transitions in leadership are a common and key feature of such teams, there is little insight into how and when leadership arrangements transition over time. Bridging the shared leadership and team adaptation literatures, we present a model of Leadership Transitions in Teams to describe the adaptive process through which teams intentionally modify the existing leadership arrangement. The basic assumption underlying this model is that leadership transitions occur when there is a mismatch between the team’s needs and its current leadership arrangement. Such a mismatch results from an anticipated or observed change. If it is anticipated, team members can democratically discuss and try out a new leadership arrangement, preventing mismatch and thus lowered team effectiveness. In contrast, if the mismatch has already occurred, teams are more likely to adopt a less democratic process—either a coalition-based or intervening-based process—to change the leadership arrangement in their team to counteract faltering team effectiveness. We propose that the ways in which leadership transition episodes can unfold and relate to team effectiveness will depend on the type (determined by the timing of the leadership transition episode in relation to the change), approach (determined by the extent to which there is consensus on if and how to change the leadership transition episode), and boundary conditions of leadership transition episodes. We advance an agenda for research on leadership transitions in teams and outline practical implications for teams with shared leadership structures.

There Is Light and There Is Darkness: On the Temporal Dynamics of Cohesion, Coordination, and Performance in Business Teams

This study examines teams as complex adaptive systems (tCAS) and uses latent growth curve modeling to test team cohesion as an initial condition conducive to team performance over time and the mediational effect of team coordination on this relationship. After analyzing 158 teams enrolled in a business game simulation over five consecutive weeks, we found that change in team coordination was best described by a continuous linear change model, while change in team performance was best described by a continuous nonlinear change model; and the mediation latent growth curve model revealed a negative indirect effect of team cohesion on the level of change in team performance over time, through the level of change in team coordination. This study contributes to the science of teams by combining the notions of initial conditions with co-evolving team dynamics, hence creating a more refined temporal approach to understanding team functioning.

Teams as Complex Adaptive Systems: Reviewing 17 Years of Research

At the turn of the century, Arrow, McGrath, and Berdahl portrayed teams as complex adaptive systems (CAS). And yet, despite broad agreement that this approach facilitates a better understanding of teams, it has only now been timidly incorporated into team research. To help fully incorporate the logic of teams as CAS in the science of teams, we review extant research on teams approached from a nonlinear dynamical system theory. Using a systematic review approach, we selected 92 articles published over the last 17 years to integrate what we know about teams as CAS. Our review reveals the evidence supporting teams as CAS, and the set of analytical techniques to analyze team data from this perspective. This review contributes to teams’ theory and practice by offering ways to identify both research methods and managing techniques that scholars and practitioners may apply to study and manage teams as CAS.