研发团队中共享领导力的涌现机制:基于复杂领导力理论的组态分析

The Emergence Mechanism of Shared Leadership in R&D Teams:Configuration Analysis Based on Complexity Leadership Theory

研究证实共享领导力对提升多元化研发团队的创新绩效具有重要作用,因此如何促使研发团队中共享领导力涌现成为关键问题。然而传统研究大多基于相关性视角探究单个要素对共享领导力影响的净效应,忽视了各要素的多重并发与协同作用。基于复杂领导力理论,以89个研发项目团队为样本,引入模糊集定性比较分析方法,探究在团队发展不同阶段行政型行为垂直领导力、适应型行为交互记忆系统、赋能型行为多元化管理实践,以及任务特性对共享领导力涌现的组态影响。结果发现共享领导力的涌现路径在团队前期和后期阶段存在显著差异。团队前期阶段,产生高共享领导力的组态主要有行政主导的赋能型、行政主导的适应赋能型两种,行政主导的赋能型是在高相依性但非高系统复杂性的任务下,垂直领导力与多元化管理实践共同促成了共享领导力涌现,行政主导的适应赋能型表明在系统复杂性未知时,还需要在行政主导的赋能型的基础上发展高水平的团队交互记忆系统的专长和信任。团队后期阶段,高共享领导力的产生组态表现为行政主导的专长信任型、行政主导的专长协调型、行政缺失的适应型三种,行政主导的专长信任型和专长协调型是在高相依性和系统复杂性的任务下,共享领导力可以通过高垂直领导力和发达的交互记忆系统实现,而行政缺失的适应型表示在系统复杂性不高时,需要降低行政影响才能促成共享领导力的涌现。补充访谈进一步支持了以上结论。

Given the importance of shared leadership in the innovation process of RD teams,the emergence mechanism of shared leadership has become a crucial issue in leadership research.The extant studies have identified a series of significant antecedent factors that affect the emergence of shared leadership,and mainly focus on exploring the net effects of isolated factors but neglect the complex interactions among those factors and the potential intersection of multiple-factor trajectories.The emergence of shared leadership occurs in different ways including a diverse set of antecedent conditions and the conditions of occurrence may be completely different from the conditions of nonoccurrence because of causal asymmetry.Thus,this study adopts a configurational approach,i.e.fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis(fsQCA) to explain this complex and nonlinear causal relationship and examine how different antecedents combine to affect the emergence of shared leadership in RD teams.Drawing on the complexity leadership theory,we propose a conceptual framework that focuses on exploring the configuration effects of administrative leadership behaviors(i.e.,vertical leadership),adaptive leadership behaviors(i.e.,transactive memory system,including specialization,credibility,and coordination),enabling leadership behaviors(i.e.,diversity management practices) and task characteristics including task interdependence and system complexity,and further explore the different mechanisms of shared leadership emergence in different phases of RD team's life cycle.Team-level data is collected by a survey method.To enhance the response quality and minimize the impact of the common method variance,we design two kinds of questionnaires respectively for team leaders and team members.A total of 89 valid team samples have been obtained,comprising 30 samples from the early phase and 59 samples from the later phase.The results show that:(1) In the early phase,there are two pathways leading to a high level of shared leadership including administrative-enabling configuration,and administrative-adaptive-enabling configuration.The administrative-enabling configuration shows that in a team with interdependent tasks and absent system complexity,vertical leadership and diversity management practices jointly contribute to the emergence of shared leadership.The administrative-adaptive-enabling configuration shows that,regardless of the system complexity,in a team with interdependent tasks,in addition to high-level vertical leadership and diversity management practices,specialization and credibility of the transactive memory system are required for shared leadership emergence.(2) In the later phase,there are three pathways leading to a high level of shared leadership including administrative-specialization-trust configuration,administrative-specialization-coordination configuration,and non-administrative-adaptive configuration.The first two configurations show that,for a team with interdependent and complex tasks,vertical leadership and transactive memory system(specialization and credibility for the administrative-specialization-trust configuration,or specialization and coordination for the administrative-specialization-coordination configuration) jointly contribute to the emergence of shared leadership.Differently,the non-administrative-adaptive configuration indicates when vertical leadership is absent from an RD team with interdependent tasks but non-complex system,it can still facilitate the emergence of shared leadership through carrying out the three dimensions of the transactive memory system,i.e.specialization,credibility,and coordination.The study contributes to the current researches on shared leadership by identifying the interaction effects of the antecedents and the critical equivalent configurations of shared leadership in the RD teams and revealing the complex dynamics of shared leadership emergency with a holistic configurational method.The findings of combinatorial and overlap effects of administrative,adaptive,and enabling behaviors enhance the understanding of how shared leadership emerges from the view of complexity leadership theory.The configuration results also provide the recipes for managers to achieve shared leadership through deploying vertical leadership,transactive memory system,and diversity management practices under different task characteristics and team phases.It is recommended that future researchers explore longitudinal team study of full life cycle for shared leadership emergencies,broaden the data scope to test the generalizability of those alternative conditions,and compare the differences in diverse cultural contexts.