Improving leadership in Higher Education institutions:a distributed perspective

Jitse D. J. van Ameijde Æ Patrick C. Nelson Æ Jon Billsberry ÆNathalie van Meurs

Published online: 19 April 2009� Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

Abstract This paper reports on a qualitative study exploring how distributed patterns of

leadership manifest themselves in project teams within a Higher Education institution. The

emphasis is on both the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of distributed leadership, thus providing an

account of the nature of distributed leadership in higher education and the factors which

were found to enhance and inhibit its occurrence and effectiveness. The findings are

presented in a model of distributed leadership which seeks to provide an integrative

account and a framework for further study. The conclusions focus on both the theoretical

implications for the study of distributed leadership and the practical implications for HE

institutions wishing to promote effective leadership.

Keywords Leadership � Distributed � Project teams � Higher education �Qualitative

Introduction

Higher Education institutions are facing continuous pressures for change. Over the past

few decades traditional principles of academic leadership and collegial forms of

J. D. J. van Ameijde (&) � P. C. NelsonHuman Resources Division, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, BuckinghamshireMK7 6AA, UKe-mail: j.van.ameijde@open.ac.uk

P. C. Nelsone-mail: p.nelson@open.ac.uk

J. BillsberryFaculty for Business, Environment and Society, Coventry University, Priory Street, Coventry,Warwickshire CV1 5FB, UKe-mail: j.billsberry@coventry.ac.uk

N. van MeursMiddlesex University Business School, Hendon, London NW4 4BT, UKe-mail: N.VanMeurs@mdx.ac.uk

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High Educ (2009) 58:763–779DOI 10.1007/s10734-009-9224-y

governance have been rapidly replaced by management principles adopted from the private

sector. Evidence of this move towards what has been termed ‘New Public Management’

(Chandler et al. 2002) or ‘New Managerialism’ (Deem 1998) has been observed in

countries all over the world. Increasingly, government policies require universities to

account for the expenditure of public funds and provide evidence of ‘value for money’. In

the UK context, such government pressures have become evident through mechanisms

such as the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) and Teaching Quality Assessment

(TQA). Together with increased competition between universities for students and funding

support, as well as expectations from the private sector around the provision of appro-

priately trained graduates, these pressures have led to what has been experienced as a

commoditization of knowledge work. The effect of these changes has even been observed

within higher education discourse in which the academic language of deans, students, and

courses has become increasingly displaced by language of line-managers, customers, and

products (Gumport 2000; Parker and Jary 1995).

As a result, Higher Education institutions are no longer the protected entities whose

legitimacy is taken for granted, but instead are expected to face the complexity of bal-

ancing the need to operate according to market pressures, teach an increased number of

students despite diminishing financial means while struggling to maintain traditional

academic and educational principles of quality.

The mechanisms which many Higher Education institutions have implemented to deal

with these pressures seem to have created an interesting paradox. The introduction of

procedures around performance measurement, quality control, and audit aimed at

improving the effectiveness and accountability of HE institutions have at the same time

contributed to the creation of additional bureaucratic layers of control which have often

been experienced as inhibiting organisational effectiveness and responsiveness. Also,

several commentators have pointed out the negative effects of these measures through the

pressures they have created on academic as well as non-academic staff, and the resulting

tensions between management and staff in Higher Education institutions (i.e., Chandler

et al. 2002; Parker and Jary 1995; Huisman and Currie 2004). However, it has been

acknowledged that the transformation of higher education is irreversible, and that some of

the principles which this transformation seeks to bring about serve a legitimate purpose,

despite valid concerns regarding the way these changes have often been implemented

(Parker and Jary 1995).

Additionally, quite often the ‘solutions’ derived from the private sector which Higher

Education institutions have tried to implement were based on principles and approaches

derived from out-dated ideas and management fads which have already been abandoned in

the sector from which they originated (Birnbaum 2000a, b). These issues are exacerbated

by the fact that Higher Education institutions have unique cultural characteristics which

make the translation from management principles derived from the private-sector to a

higher education context problematic. Several authors have pointed out the cultural

uniqueness of higher education establishments (e.g., Birnbaum 1988; Bergquist 1992) and

the need to align the leadership of change to university culture (Kezar and Eckel 2002;

Lueddeke 1999; Middlehurst 1997). Clashes between the principles of management and a

traditional culture of collegial leadership have been widely reported on (Chandler et al.

2002), highlighting the need to adapt leadership and management principles to a higher

education context.

We believe that principles of distributed leadership provide a means for overcoming

some of the problems. On a conceptual level, the notion of distributed leadership seems

well aligned with notions of collegiality and professional autonomy which have

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traditionally been characteristic of higher education leadership, while also recognising the

wider institutional needs for effectively managing the changes that turbulent environments

impose on Higher Education institutions. Before we outline the aims of our study of

distributed leadership in a higher education establishment within the UK, we will first

provide an overview of the literature on distributed leadership.

Distributed leadership

Within the scientific leadership field, a growing body of research is dedicated to studying

leadership as a shared or distributed phenomenon. In itself, the emergence of a new

perspective on leadership is nothing new within the leadership field, which has traditionally

been characterized by the co-existence of a rich variety of divergent theories. However,

despite this divergence in theoretical development, one common assumption seems to have

underpinned most traditional leadership theories: the view that leadership is a vertical

process which separates leaders from followers as mutually exclusive categories (Pearce

and Conger 2003, p. 1; Rost 1993, p. 70; Yukl 2002, p. 2). Distributed leadership chal-

lenges this view of leadership as a solely vertical process in which an individual leader is

seen as the main source of influence which shapes the emergence of collective action, and

instead focuses on the mechanisms through which diverse individuals contribute to the

process of leadership in shaping collective action. As such, it provides an important

complementary understanding of the subtleties of leadership in real organisational settings.

Several factors could be seen as contributing to the shift from studying leadership as a

vertical influence process to studying leadership as a distributed phenomenon. First of all,

the growing interest in complexity sciences has increasingly highlighted the shortcomings

of traditional reductionist science in explaining many real-world phenomena. The power of

paradigm in guiding the structure in which phenomena are studied and the types of

questions that science can legitimately seek to answer could not be underestimated (Kuhn

1996). In the scientific study of leadership, this reductionist paradigm seems to have

granted ontological status to the distinction between leaders and followers, and sought to

explain leadership phenomena through simple cause and effect relationships between these

two exclusive categories, with only limited emphasis being placed on the complexities in

which context shapes the leadership process. Such observations have fuelled a recent shift

away from studying social phenomena from a reductionist paradigm which traditionally

sought to break down social phenomena into discrete components and study them in

isolation, leading to atomistic explanations of leadership which have been accused of

failing to explain the true complexities and subtleties leadership processes, in which

influence processes are often shared between different individuals (Gronn 2002; Spillane

et al. 2001, 2004).

Secondly, the increased reliance of organizations on team based work has led to a

growing dissatisfaction with traditional leader-centric approaches in explaining the com-

plexities of leadership within such team-based settings. Many organizations increasingly

depend on cross-functional, self managing work-teams to deal with the growing com-

plexities of work and to sustain their competitiveness (Cummings and Worley 2004, p.

341). There is a growing utilization of project teams in managing project work involving

matters ranging from new product development to implementing organizational change

(Thamhain 2004), and knowledge work is becoming increasingly team-based and requires

the coordination and integration of the expertise of diverse professionals from dispersed

fields (Pearce 2004). However, even though the literature on team working has provided a

wealth of knowledge regarding the factors that shape team success, it has still put

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considerable emphasis on the role of formal team leaders in shaping team effectiveness

(Day et al. 2006), despite the fact that the role of individual leaders in shaping collective

outcomes is often greatly overestimated (Meindl et al. 1985).

In line with these theoretical and practical concerns regarding traditional perspectives of

understanding leadership, Gronn’s conclusion that distributed leadership is an idea whose

time has come (Gronn 2002) seems to be well grounded.

The concept of distributed leadership

Given the fact that distributed leadership as an area of scientific inquiry is still in its

infancy, a common understanding of distributed leadership has yet to be conceived of

(Bennett et al. 2003; Day et al. 2004). Some authors use the term shared leadership (e.g.,

Pearce 2004; Pearce and Sims 2002) while others employ the term distributed leadership

(e.g., Gronn 2002). At this point, there seems to be no clear conceptual differences between

these approaches, and different authors use them interchangeably (e.g., Day et al. 2004).

Besides the different terms employed, different authors diverge in their conceptual-

izations of distributed leadership on various grounds, including the scope of the network of

participating agents in the leadership process. Some authors have focused on a single team

or group of people as their unit of analysis (e.g., Brown and Hosking 1986; Locke 2003;

Pearce 2004), while others have taken a more open-systems approach, taking the whole

organization and even constituencies beyond the organizational boundaries as their unit of

analysis (e.g., Spillane et al. 2001, 2004). However, despite these differences most authors

agree upon two principles as underpinning the concept of distributed leadership:

1. Leadership is a shared influence process to which several individuals contribute

2. Leadership arises from the interactions of diverse individuals which together form a

group or network in which essential expertise is a dispersed quality

Empirical support for distributed leadership

A growing number of studies have provided empirical support for the concept of distributed

leadership. A longitudinal study of inter-organisational rule-making groups conducted by

Feyerherm (1994) provided evidence regarding the shared nature of leadership behaviours in

teams which were facing a highly complex and interdependent task, requiring the integration

of differing viewpoints and interests. In such highly interdependent situations, in which no

single individual is capable of possessing all the relevant expertise for reaching a common

goal, distributed leadership seems particularly useful (Pearce 2004).

An equally complex and interdependent challenge was faced by top management teams

in the start-up of new ventures, where Ensley et al. (2006) found distributed leadership

variables to predict firm success beyond the predictive power of vertical leadership vari-

ables. Within change management teams, Pearce and Sims (2002) found distributed

leadership patterns lead to higher performance as compared to traditional ‘leader-domi-

nated’ leadership patterns.

However, subsequent research has indicated that distributed leadership can take dif-

ferent forms, and only if different individuals within a group recognize each other as

leaders (distributed-coordinated leadership) does distributed leadership lead to increased

performance. If the different individuals within the group do not recognize each other as

leaders (distributed-fragmented leadership) there seems to be no enhanced performance

over traditional vertical leadership (Mehra et al. 2006).

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A question that rises is whether distributed leadership makes the notion of traditional

vertical leadership redundant, a possibility that Gibb (1954, in Day et al. 2004) already

identified decennia before distributed leadership became a field of scientific investigation.

However, at this point distributed leadership is seen as an important form of leadership

which can act as a complement rather than a substitute to traditional vertical leadership

(Pearce 2004). Pearce states that although dominant vertical leadership styles can suppress

team member participation in decision making, vertical leadership still plays an important

role in team design and boundary management, two factors considered important for the

ongoing success of distributed leadership. Also, critical events that disrupt team func-

tioning can call for vertical leader interventions (Morgeson and DeRue 2006).

Although it has been recognized that vertical leadership plays an important role to the

ongoing success of distributed leadership (Pearce 2004), relatively little attention has been

paid to other factors which constitute the successful practice of distributed leadership

within organizational settings. Also, much empirical work on distributed leadership so far

has adopted taken for granted traditional notions of vertical leadership and taken these as

the basis for understanding leadership from a distributed perspective. Examples of such

studies looked at traditional notions of leadership behaviours and studied to what extent

such behaviours were shared amongst different individuals (i.e., Ensley et al. 2006; Fe-

yerherm 1994). Although these studies have indicated that such behaviours are indeed

often distributed, they might have overlooked the possibility that distributed leadership

might be understood as something qualitatively different from a simple aggregation of

vertical leadership behaviours. It could be argued that these studies only looked at what

Gronn (2002) labelled ‘additive action’, ignoring the additional dynamic arising from the

interactions of the various individuals, or what Gronn (ibid) labelled ‘concretive action.’

As one of the defining principles of distributed leadership is that it arises from the

interactions of diverse individuals in a setting where expertise is a dispersed quality, our

study aims to seek an understanding of the mechanisms through which dispersed expertise is

integrated in the process of leadership. We argue that to gain deeper understanding of the

concept and practice of distributed leadership, it is important to study the concept in settings

of which the inherent complexity, interdependence, and need for integration of dispersed

expertise require the input of several constituencies in the process of leadership. Project

work is in this sense ideal for the study of distributed leadership. Project teams are often

cross-functional, requiring individuals from a range of backgrounds and sources of expertise

to integrate their collective inputs in order to reach a common goal (Pinto et al. 1993).

Therefore, project teams are characterised by a high level of interdependency between

members, placing high demands on the process of leadership to coordinate and integrate

individual inputs (Thamhain 2004). Additionally, the complex nature of projects makes

requires extended information processing, complex decision-making, and a high level of

creativity of the team, conditions ideally suited for distributed leadership (Pearce 2004).

The main aim of the present study is to gain an understanding of how patterns of

distributed leadership manifest themselves in project teams within a Higher Education

institution, and to understand whether successful project work is characterised by stronger

levels of leadership distribution. Higher Education institutions have traditionally been

characterised by collegiate cultures, which makes it likely that collegiate work patterns are

still prevalent in the way project work is conducted. As Higher Education institutions

increasingly adopt project work in order to cope with the increasing demands the higher

education context poses, such an understanding is essential for yielding lessons regarding

the ways Higher Education institutions can effectively operate and develop their

workforce.

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Method

In scholarly literature there is a growing recognition of the need to study distributed

leadership in the social context of organizations (Day et al. 2006). Therefore, a qualitative

research approach was adopted in order to generate new hypotheses (Conger 1998) and to

add to the understanding of distributed leadership in a realistic organizational setting. This

research approach provides rich data and captures the specific context. Thus, it enables also

to discover the ‘how’ of distributed leadership, as it helps to understand its underlying

structures (Pettigrew 1990). The flexible character of qualitative research makes it addi-

tionally capable for an exploratory investigation of new concepts (Bryman 2004). The

main aim of the research at this stage was an explorative investigation of factors that

influence distributed leadership both positively and negatively within an organizational

context. The intended outcomes are aimed at gaining a deeper understanding of distributed

leadership within an organizational context and extending the literature on this concept.

Five different project teams were analysed; five of which were reported to be successful

in achieving their purpose and five of which were not. This approach allowed us to

compare and contrast these projects in terms of distributed leadership. A combination of

causal mapping and semi-structured interviews were used to collect data on the ten dif-

ferent projects.

Research context

We conducted this study at a large UK based university, which has not been excluded from

the pressures to increase efficiency and the resulting frictions between the new managerial

practices and the traditional way of running the university. The initial structure of the

university relied on pluralistic decision-making, which was mainly represented by com-

mittees whose members were appointed on their (academic) expertise. The growth of the

university led to a significant increase in the number of committees, resulting in an

impediment of decision-making. This impediment of decision-making reached a point at

which it diminished, in the view of many staff members, the ability of the university to

react on and adapt to environmental changes. With the decline in student numbers at the

start of the new millennium, also due to increased national and international competition, a

lot of activities and projects were launched in several directions to regain lost students and

to secure the university’s income. The situation at present is that the university has

developed different strategic priorities and is searching for a new mission that is able to

capture all the priorities into an integrating whole. Furthermore, staff members perceive an

ongoing struggle between the traditionally pluralistic culture, academic freedom and the

increase of managerial top down practices. The present conditions of an increasingly

complex environment and of a surge of projects within the university offered an ideal

context to further explore the promoting and inhibiting factors of distributed leadership; a

concept which the university itself wants to promote within its boundaries.

Sampling

Participants for the study were identified by purposive sampling and by referral sampling

methods. Five individuals from a range of different positions were selected and approached

for participation in the research project. The university’s staff consists of roughly 80%

administrative employees and of about 20% academics. Middle and senior management is

composed of about 60% male and 40% female. Therefore, five individuals occupying

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middle and senior management positions were selected, four of which had administrative

positions and one which had an academic position Two of the participants were female and

three male. All of the five individuals had an organizational tenure of at least 2 years and

had been involved in a range of projects. To gather participants for the surrounding semi-

structured interviews to every case, each individual was asked to name five other indi-

viduals who could provide additional insights in the identified cases. As it proved to be

difficult for most of the initial individuals to name five additional individuals, a total of 20

(3–4–4–4–5) additional participants were interviewed.

Data collection

With each of the initial five individuals, a separate session was held in which they were

asked to describe two projects they had been involved in; one project they regarded as

successful, and one project they regarded as unsuccessful. During these sessions, we

constructed causal maps together with the individual for both the successful and the

unsuccessful projects, focusing on the factors which caused the projects to be successful or

unsuccessful. At the end of these sessions, the individuals ware asked to name up to five

additional people who were involved in the projects they had described. These people were

subsequently interviewed using a semi-structured interview technique to provide more data

on the leadership of these projects. A total of 20 additional participants were interviewed,

making 25 in total.

Data analysis

All the causal mapping sessions were audio recorded and verbatim transcribed. The causal

maps themselves were imported into Decision Explorer, a software program to analyze

causal maps. The interviews were audio recorded and then verbatim transcribed. The

transcripts of both the causal mapping sessions and the interviews were then imported into

Nvivo7, a computer based program for qualitative data analysis. The transcripts were used

as the main source of data analysis. The causal maps served as complementation and

verification for the transcripts of the mapping sessions.

The transcripts were coded on the basis of factors perceived as influencing distributed

leadership. During this coding, the focus was laid on the team being the unit of analysis.

Therefore, no difference was made between the different members of a project team,

regardless of their formal status within the team. Content analysis was used to identify

recurrent themes, by then classifying these recurrent themes into categories which were

perceived to be factors influencing distributed leadership. The factors were then discussed to

reach consensual inter-subjectivity. Consensual inter-subjectivity is the consensus that is

reached between researchers on the interpretation of data, and is regarded as a main tool in

qualitative research to measure reliability (Smaling 1992). On the basis of a randomly chosen

transcript an interrater reliability of 87% was found, using the percentage agreement method.

Results

Through the iterative process of analyzing and coding the transcripts, several factors were

identified which were thought to relate to distributed leadership in project teams. We divided

the emerging factors according to the level at which they operate. At the organizational level,

several factors around external activities and processes were identified. These factors

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involved the way in which the team interacted with and related to important constituencies

outside of the team. These factors were found to influence important outcomes, which in turn

served as inputs for continuing distributed leadership at the team level. At the team level,

several factors were found which relate to the way the team itself operates. These factors were

divided into critical internal conditions and critical internal processes.

By comparing successful and unsuccessful projects, it became apparent that the factors

we identified at the organizational and team levels were important in shaping the success or

lack thereof of projects. We have attempted to encapsulate these factors in a model of

distributed leadership as presented below. However, it is important to note here that

although most of the factors seemed to play a role in all of the projects, the relative

importance and the specific configuration in which the factors interacted varied between

the projects. One aspect that seemed to particularly influence the configuration of the way

the different factors influenced project outcomes was the nature of the project as emergent

or top-down initiated.

Top-down versus emergent projects

An important distinction that emerged in the analysis of the ten different projects evolves

around the nature of the projects as either top-down driven or emergent. Four of the

analysed projects were distinctively emergent in the sense that they were initiated by a

group of two or more individuals without any formal leadership status and without formal

appointment in setting up the concerned projects. Five of the analysed projects were

distinctively top-down in nature, and were formally initiated by individuals or groups

holding senior management positions. The final project seemed to have emergent as well as

top-down properties, as the idea for this project emerged from an individual initiative, yet

the subsequent project set-up was initiated through formal management structures. The

distinction between emergent and top-down projects was seen as important as the nature of

leadership within these projects as well as the challenges the project leadership had to

overcome seemed to show important differences. Some of these differences will be

highlighted as we describe the different factors below. However, first we will introduce our

model of distributed leadership, as depicted in Fig. 1.

Distributed leadership factors

We will now provide a more in extensive description of the factors depicted in Fig. 1. As

mentioned before and presented in the model, the factors we identified as relating to

distributed leadership in project teams were divided into factors relating to external

activities (organizational level) and factors relating to internal team activities (team level).

The factors at the team level could subsequently be divided into critical internal conditions

and critical internal processes. We will first outline the factors relating to the inputs to and

outcomes of external activities (organizational level). Then we will turn to the factors

relating to team functioning (team level),

Organisational level factors

From our data, it became clear that none of the projects could be analysed in isolation from

the wider institutional context in which they were embedded. In each of the projects,

leadership was not solely confined to facilitating the internal processes of the project

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teams, but had to deal with challenges which reached beyond the direct boundaries of the

projects. Involvement of and negotiation with external stakeholders, gathering and dis-

seminating important information regarding the projects, and facilitating an alignment

between the projects and the wider organisation context were regarded as vitally important

in determining the success of the various projects.

Critical external processes

Tailoring message to the receiver was reported to be an important aspect contributing to

project outcomes. Each of the studied project teams had to engage in communication

exchanges with stakeholders external to the team itself. In such cases it often proved

necessary to present information in such a way as to meet the requirement of the specific

stakeholder group being addressed. Sometimes such tailoring was political in nature,

presenting certain aspects that were thought necessary to persuade external decision

makers or organisational members to buy into an initiative or to provide needed resources.

However, it also often constituted the presentation of information in a format under-

standable by the recipient by omitting or translating technical jargon or unnecessary

details.

Another external activity project teams often had to engage in constituted the feedbackof progress. Such feedback served to inform external stakeholders of any successes or

obstacles faced by the project team and was often necessary to ensure continuing support

and involvement of external stakeholders. Also, such feedback was often found important

Fig. 1 Model of distributed leadership in project teams

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in ensuring alignment between project teams and wider organisational needs. Additionally,

such feedback was often seen as building on important relationships with external con-

stituencies needed for the continuing success of distributed leadership.

Involving key people was found to be a third important external activity. This

involvement was found to be especially essential in cases where certain critical expertise

was missing within the team. In these cases, such expertise had to be ‘borrowed’ from

individuals external to the team boundaries in order to integrate their contribution in the

process of leadership. Furthermore, the involvement of people external to the team often

helped building valuable informal relationships around the organization, enhancing the

project’s future success. At other times, such involvement was found to be essential to

ensure the support of important external decision makers who had a stake in the project

outcomes. In a number of projects failure to involve such key external stakeholders was

reported to severely diminish the success of the respective projects.

In most projects, external activities were not just conducted by one specific individual.

Although most top-down initiated projects did have one or a number of designated team

members formally responsible for conducting some of the external activities such as

reporting to higher management, in most projects external activities were conducted by a

number of different project team members, depending on the specific situation or skills

required. Especially in emergent projects, conducting external activities seemed to be quite

organic in nature, often involving informal networks of various team members. In such

cases, the distributed nature of the leadership process seemed particularly emphasized.

Critical external conditions

Successfully conducted external processes were reported to shape several valuable con-

ditions which enhanced the continuing success of distributed leadership of project teams.

When successful, such processes led to the support of external constituencies consisting of

members of the wider organisational community and important decision makers, which in

turn increased the likeliness of the project team to acquire valuable information, resources,

and expertise needed for the project, as well as maintaining alignment with the wider

organisational needs and building trust. Most projects that reported problems in conducting

such external activities faced problems which in some cases even resulted in project

failure. The outcomes of external activities often served as important inputs for continuing

successful distributed leadership within the teams, such as trust from external decision

makers leading to an increased level of autonomy for the team in conducting their

activities.

Support from members of the wider organisational community was important in most

projects and essential especially in projects which were aimed at managing organisational

change. In these cases, continuing involvement of and communication with the wider

community was seen as key in determining project outcomes.

Support from decision makers outside of the team was reported as important for

ensuring a flow of information and resources needed by the team, as well as gaining their

trust and willingness to delegate autonomy, making it possible to make important decisions

at the team level.

Information gained through conducting external activities was often reported to serve an

essential role in making important decisions within the team and aligning team activities to

the wider organisational operations. A number of teams which reported problems in

gaining external information were found to lack the ability to make important decisions or

identify issues and obstacles, in some cases resulting in interventions from external

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decision makers or cancellation of the project. Effectively conducting external activities

provided teams with timely and accurate information enhancing the effectiveness of dis-

tributed leadership within the team.

Another important outcome of external activities consisted of resources. Resources

included aspects like funding, time, facilities and equipment necessary for effectively

conducting project activities. Although most resources were gained through key external

decision makers, often important resources were gained through informal networks,

especially in cases where time was too critical to acquire resources through formal

organisational channels.

The final important outcome of external activities consisted of externally acquired

expertise. As distributed leadership is underpinned by the notion of expertise as a dispersed

quality which needs to be integrated in the process of leadership, this outcome of external

activities is considered especially important. Although most project teams possessed most

of the required expertise internally, there were often moments where certain essential

expertise could not be found within the team boundaries. In these cases, it proved essential

to integrate externally acquired expertise in the process of leadership. In some projects,

such external expertise was acquired through external consultants, but more often it was

acquired through informal organisational networks of team members. In several projects, a

failure to gain access to expertise external to the team led to stifled team progress.

Team level factors

The second aspect important for distributed leadership is the internal functioning of the

team. Several factors influencing distributed leadership at the team level were identified.

They were subdivided into critical internal conditions and critical internal processes.

Below, we will first describe the critical internal conditions, followed by the critical

internal processes.

Critical internal conditions

Critical internal conditions constitute the enabling factors that need to be in place in order

for successful distributed leadership to occur. Most of these conditions can be influenced

through team design. Together, these conditions allow for the emergence of the critical

internal and external processes necessary for effective distribution of leadership. Six

critical conditions were derived from our case study data.

Autonomy was found to be an important factor in enabling teams to engage in dis-

tributed leadership. Teams which had a high degree of autonomy were more flexible in

making decisions and coordinating their activities, as they did not rely on the approval of

external decision makers. Autonomy also seemed to grant a degree of ownership in team

activities and outcomes. It was found however that autonomy was not a given for most

project teams, and often a team needed to build an extent of trust with external decision

makers in order to be allowed the autonomy needed to influence the leadership within the

team. This seemed particularly important in emergent projects. However, too much

autonomy was also found to lead to isolation, highlighting the need to balance the amount

of autonomy with a level of alignment with the wider organisational context.

A clearly defined goal was another condition which was found important in order to

enable effective distributed leadership to emerge. Teams which had a clear goal were

found to be more successful in coordinating their activities and focus their energies in a

common direction. A clearly defined goal was also found to enhance a team’s capacity to

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monitor and feed back on progress, as well as enabling them to engage in adaptive

behaviours in case of changes in the team environment. In a number of projects, the lack of

clarity regarding the team goal resulted in divergence of activities and a lack of integration,

which stifled team progress and frustrated team members. Especially in emergent projects,

where team goals were not given by external decision makers, a clearly defined goal played

an important role in managing external relationships and securing external support.

A shared internal support for the team goal was found to be another factor influencing

the emergence of successful distributed leadership. Team members who believed in the

team goal were more likely to actively contribute to team leadership and engage in

adaptive behaviours if a present course of action proved to be ineffective. In some projects,

the lack of internal support for the team goal was found to result in team members ‘just

doing their job,’ even though it was clear that the present course of action was clearly

ineffective. Most emergent projects were characterized by a high support for the team goal,

as team members took part in such project on their own initiative. However, some top-

down initiated projects lacked the support of team members, resulting in stifled progress

especially if barriers were encountered.

Clearly defined responsibilities were found to be another factor important for successful

distributed leadership. If responsibilities were clearly defined, teams were found to be more

effective in coordinating their collective inputs. Also, responsibilities needed to be linked

with individual expertise in order for individuals to successfully contribute to the leader-

ship process. Especially in some top-down projects, certain individuals were given

responsibilities which lied outside of their area of expertise or motivation, resulting in poor

team performance. A lack of clearly defined responsibilities for individual members often

resulted in conflicts between team members who felt others encroached on their perceived

responsibilities. Also, if clearly defined responsibilities were lacking, this often led to

duplication of activities, or essential activities not being performed. However, a certain

balance between clear individual responsibilities was needed to be offset by a sense of

shared responsibility for team outcomes. Some of the projects lacked the capacity to adapt

to changing circumstances due to the fact that dealing with changing circumstances was

not perceived by any individual member to be ‘their responsibility.’ In such cases, a shared

support for the goal was found to be important in motivating team members to redefine

responsibilities in a flexible way. Another interesting observation was that responsibilities

often seemed more ‘organic’ in emergent projects, where the boundaries between

responsibilities were often less well defined than in top-down initiated projects.

Key internal expertise was another essential factor for the emergence of distributed

leadership. Successful distributed leadership depends on the integration of diverse sources

of expertise in the process of leadership. Although some expertise can be ‘borrowed’

through external activities, it was found to be important that most of the essential expertise

needed for the team task needed to be available within the team. Such expertise did not

only constitute knowledge and skills associated with a certain professional field, but also

encompassed cultural, political, and procedural knowledge of the organisation.

Team size was found to be another important aspect influencing the emergence of

successful distributed leadership. When teams were too small, they lacked the necessary

internal expertise to successfully deal with the complexity of the team task. However,

teams that were too large were often found to face difficulties in integrating and coordi-

nating the activities of the individual members, including all members in the process of

leadership, or to reach joint decisions. Therefore it seemed important to seek a balance

between a team large enough so that all necessary expertise needed for managing the task

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complexity was available and a team small enough to make coordination and integration of

team effort possible.

Critical internal processes

Critical internal processes constitute the team processes which were found to underpin the

emergence of distributed leadership. Their emergence seemed to rely on the critical internal

conditions described above. However, in contrast to the critical internal conditions, critical

internal processes could not directly be influenced by team design, but rather needed to be

fostered and developed within the team. Five critical internal processes were identified.

Information sharing within the team was found to be essential for team members to

develop a common understanding of the team task and the issues faced by the team, which

in turn enabled members to participate in shared decision making and leadership. Openly

sharing information within the team seemed to foster a transparency in decision making

and the development of trust between team members, fostering an atmosphere in which all

team members could contribute to the leadership process.

Mutual performance monitoring involves team members taking account of each other’s

activities and offering feedback, help, or suggestions when needed. Through mutual per-

formance monitoring, teams seemed better able to diagnose their situation and surface

emerging issues before they became problematic. Mutual performance monitoring also

seemed to help teams develop an awareness of individual strengths and weaknesses, which

allowed them to build on each others’ strengths and complement each others’ weaknesses.

Coordinating activities constitutes the process through which team members organise

and plan their individual activities in order to gear them to a collective team goal. This

process was often found to be based on negotiation and relied heavily on the exchange of

information between team members. Project teams which did not specifically address the

coordination of their activities were often found to work ineffectively as certain work was

duplicated or not addressed at all.

Adaptive behaviours involve team members changing their approach in case of altered

requirements due to changes in the team’s environment or when established approaches

turn out to be ineffective in achieving team goals. Some teams were found to continue on

an established course which no longer aligned with changing organisational needs,

resulting in top-down interventions to halt the project or force a change of course. Other

teams were actively engaged in assuring that changing circumstances were incorporated in

team conduct, thereby establishing continuous realignment in dynamically changing

circumstances.

Inclusiveness constitutes team members actively seeking to involve one another in the

process of sense-making and decision-making. Inclusiveness did not only facilitate the

inclusion of all available expertise in the process of leadership, thereby making sure team

activities were monitored from a variety of perspectives and interests, it also created an

atmosphere in which team members experienced a sense of ownership and being valued.

Such ownership ensured that team members remained actively involved and supportive of

team goals.

Discussion

Leadership remains an elusive and enigmatic concept, and studying leadership from a

distributed perspective does not mitigate the complexities of the phenomenon. However,

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by embracing the complexities of leadership as a distributed phenomenon and studying it

in real organizational settings, we have tried to understand some of the factors that

influence the occurrence and success of distributed leadership. Due to the inherent com-

plexity and interdependence of project work, studying the factors that influence the success

or failure of projects and analyzing these factors through a distributed leadership lens

allowed us to gain an understanding of the processes through which leadership is dis-

tributed over a range of individuals. By taking a qualitative approach aimed at identifying

the factors that influenced the success or failure of projects and looking at the processes

which gave rise to collective activity within these projects, we have avoided adopting a

specific predefined conception of distributed leadership.

Despite the exploratory nature of our study, our data support some of the previous

findings from the fields of distributed, shared, and team leadership. Pearce (2004), for

instance, highlighted the importance of expertise, the allocation of responsibilities, optimal

team size, and a clearly defined goal or vision as factors essential to the development and

successful continuity of shared leadership. Day et al. (2004) found that adaptability and

mutual performance monitoring were necessary for effective team leadership, a finding

supported by our study. Additionally, their concept of team orientation shows strong

resemblance with what we have termed inclusiveness, another aspect found to be important

for the development of distributed patterns of leadership. Burke et al. (2006) described

empowerment as an enhancing factor for successful teamwork, in line with our finding that

a level of autonomy is essential for a team to engage in effective distributed leadership.

Additionally, our notion of inclusiveness as important to distributed leadership seems to be

similar to Burke et al.’s concept of consideration.

Besides supporting these previous findings and grounding them in qualitative empirical

data, we hope that our study has contributed to an integration of these previous findings in

a field which is still characterized by theoretical and conceptual pluralism. The model of

distributed leadership as we propose it is by no means meant to be a final framework, but

rather a device to structure our understanding of and inquiry into the concept of distributed

leadership.

Implications for the field

One thing that our study highlights is the importance of engaging in external activities as a

necessary condition for the continuous success of distributed leadership. Other researchers

have already identified such external activities—often termed boundary management—as

important aspects of effective team work (e.g., Burke et al. 2006; Elkins and Keller 2003;

Pearce 2004). However, most of these authors have placed considerable emphasis on the

designated team leader as playing a vital role in such external activities, something which was

not reflected in our cases. From our data, it became obvious that different team members were

responsible for conducting activities related to the wider organizational context, either

because of their specific expertise or because of their particular informal networks.

Also, previous research has focused on boundary management as a means for securing

resources and information from the wider organizational context (e.g., Brown and Ei-

senhardt 1995; Pearce 2004). What our study adds to this is an understanding of boundary

management as a means to integrate certain vital expertise not available within the team, as

well as its role as a mechanism for ensuring continuous alignment between a team and the

wider organizational context.

This finding also carries implications for conceptual considerations around the notion

distributed leadership. As noted in the introduction, authors in the field of distributed

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leadership differ in terms of how they define the scope of participating agents in the

process of distributed leadership, where on one end the focus lies solely on the team level,

and on the other end the organization as a whole as well as agents outside of the organ-

isational boundaries are seen as participants in the process of leadership. Based on our

findings, we suggest that the network of participation in leadership is essentially a

boundary judgment which needs to be made based on the context of the situation. Also, we

believe that such boundaries are essentially fluid, and can be extended or limited depending

on the present needs of the team or organization.

Implications for practice and leadership development in higher education

As noted in the introductions, Higher Education institutions seem to struggle in dealing

with the tensions between traditional collegial notions of leadership and the introduction of

management principles derived from the private sector. We believe that the principles of

distributed leadership show promise in overcoming some of these tensions and help Higher

Education institutions deal more effectively with the pressures of adapting to ever

increasing rates of environmental change.

In practice, we have seen this in a number of our cases where academic and adminis-

trative staff have transcended the cultural frictions and successfully engaged in initiatives

where each complemented rather than opposed the other, even leading to successful

attempts to start linking in-house academic research to leadership and management

practice within the organisation.

However, some of our cases also highlighted the fragility of effective distributed

leadership. Examples of this include cases where team members reported ceasing to

actively contribute to the process of leadership due to other—more senior—team members

exerting authoritarian influence over decisions that concerned the team as a whole. In other

cases, repeated obstructions to team progress resulting from bureaucratic organisational

procedures or powerful groups within the organization caused teams to give up their efforts

to actively contribute to project outcomes.

In order for distributed leadership to work effectively, it seems that organizations need

to approach leadership development in a different way than traditional conceptions of

leadership would direct. Instead of focusing on the development of the leadership capa-

bilities of an organization’s designated leaders, focus would shift to investing not only in

developing leadership skills of the workforce as a whole, but also to facilitating the

conditions conductive for the emergence of successful distributed leadership and the for-

mation of informal networks of expertise. Developing the leadership skills of the work-

force without facilitating the conditions for distributed leadership to thrive would quite

likely lead to frustrations and inhibited effectiveness and engagement, whereas the facil-

itation of the necessary conditions without development of the required skills would likely

lead to confusion and misalignment of teams with the wider organisational context.

Conclusion

Distributed leadership could play a major role in the future of our knowledge-based society

as it combines the strengths of various individuals and balances their weaknesses. It might

well be that in a world where work is increasingly team-based and no single person can

hold all the relevant knowledge to make the right decisions, there is a growing belief that

the competitive advantage of organizations will increasingly depend on their ability to

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integrate the widely dispersed knowledge and skills of their entire workforce in the process

of leadership.

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