Together as One: Shared Leadership Between Managers

Abstract

The focus of the current paper is the formally shared leadership between managers. Position-sharing within pairs of managers demonstrates an alternative way of organising leadership within a managerial position. This paper aims to contribute knowledge about how to understand the phenomenon of formally shared leadership between managers, and to suggest concepts for its different forms. In the research literature, a range of different terms is used and it is difficult to see how or when this variation in labels is useful. Shared leadership between managers is here studied in relation to three perspectives: organisational structure, managers’ experiences, and tasks and responsibilities. Future research has several questions left to answer in order to further understand the relatively widespread but under-researched issue of shared leadership between managers.