Integrating Formal and Shared Leadership: the Moderating Influence of Role Ambiguity on Innovation

Abstract

This research seeks to integrate traditional formal leadership structures and emerging shared leadership approaches to team leadership to examine how they jointly relate to innovative outcomes in teams. To reconcile contradictory theory and research that views formal leadership as both beneficial and detrimental to informal leadership, we take a contingency-based approach and hypothesize and find that a designated, nominal formal leader is positively related to shared leadership emergence when role ambiguity is high. Additionally, high role ambiguity enhances the indirect effect of designated formal leadership on team innovation via shared leadership. Alternatively, low ambiguity neutralizes the effect of designated formal leadership on shared leadership and the indirect effect on team innovation via shared leadership. These findings help to address conflicting perspectives regarding the linkage of formal leadership and shared leadership and their respective influence on team innovation.