AND THE IMPORTANCE OF TRUST
Master thesis, MscBA, specialization Human Resource Management
University of Groningen, Faculty of Management and Organization
Bsc Bedrijfskunde
August, 2008
RENATE M. STAGGE Singelweg 1A 9714 AP Groningen (06)43226515 R.M.Stagge@student.rug.nl Student number 1597221 Supervisor/ university Drs. N.Manheim 2nd Supervisor/ university Prof. Dr. O. Janssen Acknowledgements:SHARED LEADERSHIP AND TEAMLEARNING, AND THE IMPORTANCE OF TRUST
Because of changes in the business environment leadership nowadays is shared more in teams. Shared leadership is the concept of team members exhibiting leadership. This article presents an empirical research on shared leadership and team learning. It was expected that more shared leadership in a team relates to more team learning, and it was also expected that trust would strengthen this relationship. These hypotheses were tested with a survey amongst 39 teams. For shared leadership the leadership styles transformational leadership and boundary management exhibited by team members were measured. The results showed that when both shared transformational leadership and trust in teams are high, team learning is high as well. The other hypotheses were not supported by the results. This research shows that leadership is shared in a variety of teams. When organizations want to encourage team learning, they should monitor trust levels in their teams and train their employees in shared transformational leadership.
Keywords: shared leadership, trust, team learning, transformational leadership, boundary
1. INTRODUCTION
The business world is changing. Competition is getting more intense (Birdi, Patterson & Wood, 2007), and changes in the environment take place in a more rapid pace (Pearce & Conger, 2003). In order to adapt to this, organizations organize their work in a different way.
First of all, organizations work more often in teams, in contrast to individuals working alone (Offenbeek, 2001; Pearce & Conger, 2003). An example is the cross-functional team. This team may have a formal leader, but he or she is more treated as a peer. The team knows no hierarchal authority: the members of the team are equal. The leadership of the team depends on the subject with which the team is dealing at the moment. The member with the most expertise in the area acts as the leader of the group (Pearce & Conger, 2003).
Second, organizations need to react quicker to complicated developments. Therefore it is much harder for managers to make the right decisions at the right time. Because of this, power needs to be distributed through the whole of organizations. Leadership in organizations is more shared, instead of focussed at one single leader (Carson, Tesluk & Marrone, 2007; Pearce & Conger, 2003).
Third, knowledge nowadays is a strategic competitive resource for organizations (O’Neill & Adya, 2007). Knowledge based teams rely on employees with a high level of expertise. These employees seek autonomy in how they apply their knowledge and skills, and have the desire to engage in leadership within their team (Carson et al., 2007). To provide this autonomy to employees, team leadership is more often shared.
As these changes show, leadership in organizations is more shared nowadays, instead of being centred around one formal leader. A new stream of theoretical body is arising that focuses on leadership that is shared amongst team members. This concept is called shared leadership. In shared leadership the influence process in a team not only involves the formal leader, but also peer or lateral influence (Pearce & Conger, 2003). The leadership of the team is shared by the team members. They lead each other in order to achieve the goals of their team or organization (Bligh, Pearce & Kohles, 2006).
empirical research on shared leadership, however, is limited (Pearce and Conger, 2003; Mehra, Smith, Dixon & Robertson, 2006; Ensley, Hmieleski & Pearce, 2006). There has been research for instance on the relationship between shared leadership and team effectiveness (e.g. Avolio, Jung, Murry & Sivasubramaniam, 1996; Pearce & Sims, 2002), and on shared leadership and team performance (e.g. Perry, Pearce & Sims, 1999; Mehra et al., 2006; Carson et al., 2007). These investigations show that teams that share leadership are more effective and perform better. The theoretical explanation for these results is that when team members engage in leadership, organizations are given a competitive advantage by an increase in commitment, in the larger personal and organizational resources brought to bear on complex tasks, in openness to reciprocal influence from other team members, and in sharing information (Carson et al., 2007). When team members accept leadership from others in the team, the team is able to share leadership and function with greater effort, coordination, and efficiency (Carson et al., 2007).
Although there is research on the relation between shared leadership and team effectiveness, the link between shared leadership and another aspect of team performance – team learning – has not been investigated yet. With this study I want to investigate the relationship between shared leadership and team learning. The changing business environment makes organizations focus more on learning. The environment of organizations becomes more dynamic. This forces organizations to learn at the individual, the team and the organizational level in order to gain a competitive advantage (Murray & Moses, 2005; Birdi et al., 2007). If organizations do not succeed to adapt to changes in the environment quick enough, they will be outperformed by their competitors (Lynn, Skov & Abel, 1999). The pace of change is accelerating, and in order to adapt to this rapid pace, organizations rely more on team learning (Rangarajan, Chonko, Jones & Roberts, 2004).
been less research on the moderating effects of trust (Dirks & Ferrin, 2001). Here I focus on this moderating role of trust.
This article presents an empirical research on shared leadership, team learning, and trust. I will investigate whether teams that exhibit more shared leadership also show more team learning. The research also focuses on the moderating role of trust in this relationship. I expect shared leadership to relate stronger to team learning when team members trust each other. The model tested in this article is shown in figure 1. To test my expectations I have spread questionnaires in 39 teams.
FIGURE 1
Research Model ‘Shared Leadership and Team Learning, and Trust’
1.1 Shared Leadership
Shared leadership. Leadership is the process of encouraging others to take action in order to reach the team goals (Locke, 2003). In shared leadership, leadership is distributed amongst the team members. Instead of only the formal team leader showing leadership behaviour, team members also show leadership (Carson et al., 2007). Shared leadership is a dynamic and interactive influence process among team members. Every team member has his or her own expertise. Which team member leads the team depends on the subject that the team is dealing with (Pearce & Conger, 2003).
Shared leadership is an extreme on a continuum with traditional leadership, where there is only one leader in a team as the other extreme (Carson et al., 2007). Leadership can be more shared in one team than in another, depending on the number of team members that show leadership behaviour. The focus of this research is on two leadership styles: transformational leadership and boundary management. Both styles are related to learning. A
Shared leadership
Trust of team members in team
transformational team member stimulates learning experiences (Hater & Bass, 1988). Boundary managers communicate with other parts of the organization (Gladstein & Caldwell, 2007) bringing information to the team from which the team can learn.
Transformational leadership. Team members who show transformational leadership motivate other team members. They do this by creating and representing an inspiring vision of the future (Rowold & Heinitz, 2007), and by offering a purpose to others in the team that transcends short term goals (Judge & Picollo, 2004). Transformational team members are charismatic (Buegré, Acar & Braun, 2006). They appeal to the ideals and morals of the other team members, in order to inspire them to reach their highest goals and take responsibility for the goals of the team (Ensley et al., 2006). Transformational team members do this by transforming the basic values, beliefs, and attitudes of other team members (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Moorman & Fetter, 1990).
Boundary management. Team members who engage in boundary management are managing the interaction of the team with other parts of the organization and other aspects of the environment of the team (Gladstein & Caldwell, 1985; 2007). This includes communication with other functional groups, as well as communication with higher layers in the organizational structure. Communication refers not only to communication from the team to others, but also to communication from others to the team (Gladstein & Caldwell, 2007).
Team members who exhibit boundary management can engage in scouting activities. These are aimed at providing access to the information structure of the organization. The goal is to add expertise to the group (Ancona & Caldwell, 1992). Also, team members may coordinate the activities of the team with other parts of the organization, negotiate for the team and provide feedback. In this way they fill the gaps of the formal integration system. Their aim is to integrate the team more closely into the organization (Ancona & Calwell, 1992).
1.2 Shared Leadership and Team Learning
In teams that engage in shared leadership, team members motivate each other, share feedback, and direct team activities together (Ensley et al., 2003). They also listen to each other and share information (Locke, 2003). Therefore, these teams are more likely to learn (Edmondson, 1999).
with each other, team members seek to acquire, share, refine, or combine task related knowledge (Van der Vegt & Bunderson, 2005). Team learning creates synergy for organizations: it involves transforming conversational and collective thinking skills, so that teams can develop greater intelligence and ability than the sum of the individual team members’ talents (Murray & Moses, 2005). Teams are learning when they are reflecting on their actions and make changes to improve their future performance (Tucker, Nembhard & Edmondson, 2007). Team learning is characterized by different learning behaviours of team members: team members ask questions, seek feedback, experiment, reflect on results, and they discuss errors and unexpected outcomes with each other (Edmondson, 1999).
I expect teams that engage in transformational leadership will learn more, because transformational team members stimulate learning experiences (Hater & Bass, 1988). They expect the highest of their team (Tickle, Brownlee & Nailon, 2005; Pearce & Conger, 2003) and provide intellectual stimulation to team members (Pearce & Conger, 2003). Transformational team members also enhance learning by promoting team members’ participation in team decisions and activities, by providing them with direction, energy, and support for learning, and by promoting inspirational motivation, and self confidence among team members (Aragón-Correa, García-Morales & Cordón-Pozo, 2007). This way transformational team members stimulate the team to experiment, test assumptions and openly discuss differences of opinion (Edmondson, 1999). The team is stimulated to discuss ideas, which can lead to more team learning. This leads to the following hypotheses:
Hypothesis 1a: Shared transformational leadership is positively related to team learning.
team the opportunity to learn. Therefore it is expected that more shared boundary management relates to more team learning, leading to the following hypotheses:
Hypothesis 1b: Shared boundary management is positively related to team learning.
1.3 The Role of Trust
Trust is the willingness of team members to depend on others (Renzl, 2008). Trust is a psychological state, which manifests itself in behaviour towards other team members. It is based upon the expectations that the team member has of the others in the team. These expectations refer to the behaviours of the other team members, and to the motives and intentions of those that the team member perceives in situations that entail risk for the relationship between them (Costa et al., 2001). Take for instance a new product development team. Within such a team the process of generating new ideas is very important. When a team member trusts the rest of the team he will more easily share controversial ideas. But when the team member does not trust his team members, because he expects that they will embarrass him when he presents the idea, he will hesitate to do it.
Trust is a key factor for cooperative relationships and effective team work (Thomas & Bostrom, 2008). Team members who trust others in the team are willing to be vulnerable to the actions of the others over which they have no control. They communicate in an open way, accept influence of other team members, tolerate opportunism, and reduce control (Costa et al., 2001). When team members trust each other they are more likely to accept disagreement at face value: they will be less likely to assume that other team members have a hidden agenda or that the others are personally attacking them (Simons & Peterson, 2000).
behaviors of others, they are not sure what to expect from the other team members (Costa et al, 2001). When transformational team members provide intellectual stimulation, team members will not be sure whether the transformational team members have good motives and intentions. The team members give in this situation less feedback, and find it harder to be critical others, because they don’t know how the others will react. Because of this the team learns less than is possible. Finally, team members are more likely to interpret ambiguous behavior negatively when trust is low. They are more likely to interpret task conflicts as relational conflicts (Simons & Peterson, 2000). This makes it harder for the team to discuss ideas openly. When transformational team members stimulate learning by starting a discussion, other team members will put less effort into it because they fear a relational conflict. The team does not learn as much as it could, because not all ideas are used in the discussion. In short, low trust in a team reduces the amount of team learning that is related to shared transformational leadership. The team members share less knowledge, exchange less feedback, and are less critical to each other. The discussions in the team are also less open. As a result the team learns less then it would when trust was high.
When trust is high in a team this enhances the feeling of safety of team members. The team members trust that the others will behave like expected, and believe that they have a correct expectation of the motives and intentions of the others (Costa et al, 2001). They are less likely to misinterpret task conflict behaviors of other team members as personal conflicts, and are less likely to assume others to have hidden agendas or personally attacking them (Simons & Peterson, 2000).The team members therefore share ideas more easily (Renzl, 2008), experiment, criticise, and exchange feedback, when transformational team members stimulate them to, because they are not afraid of negative reactions of the others. This results into more team learning, leading to the following hypotheses:
Hypothesis 2a: There is an interaction between shared transformational leadership and trust on team learning: high trust in a team will reinforce the relation between shared transformational leadership and team learning, low trust will weaken it.
boundary management and team learning. High trust does not only make that team members exchange knowledge more easily (Renzle, 2008), but team members are also more likely to be critical to each other, exchange feedback, and experiment. When trust is high in a team, team members are more willing to be vulnerable to each other (Costa et al., 2001), because they have positive expectations of the intentions and behaviors of the others (Tidd, McIntyre & Friedman, 2004). Team members are less likely to take task conflicts personally (Simons & Peterson, 2000). In this situation, team members exchange critique with each other more easily. The team members also exchange feedback and experiment more easily. So, when boundary managers provide the team with outside information, the team will be more critical, give more feedback and experiment more easily with it. As a result the team learns more.
On the other hand, I expect that when trust is low in a team, shared boundary management will have a weaker relationship with team learning. Team members then are less willing to be vulnerable to each other (Costa et al., 2001). Also, they have no clear expectation of the behaviour, motives and intentions of the others (Costa et al., 2001). Team members are more likely to interpret ambiguous behaviour of others negatively, and task conflicts are more likely interpreted as personal conflicts (Simons & Peterson, 2000). The team members therefore are less likely to be critical to each other, share feedback and experiment. When boundary managers in this case provide the team with information from outside, the team will be less reflective. The team will be less critical towards the information, give less feedback and experiment less with the information, then it would in the situation when trust would be high. This reduces the amount of team learning. The final hypothesis results from this:
Hypothesis 2b: There is an interaction between shared boundary management and trust on team learning: high trust in a team will reinforce the relation between shared boundary management and team learning, low trust will weaken it.
2. METHODS
2.1 Participants
consisted of four to thirteen people. The task that the teams had to fulfil was at least semi-complex.
The 39 teams consisted of 251 team members and 39 supervisors. Of the 251 team members, 244 filled in the survey (response rate 97.2%). Of the respondents, 126 were male (51.6%) and 118 were female (48.4%). The age of the respondents varied from 17 to 58 years (M = 35.3, SD = 10.3). The average amount of years that the respondents worked within the organization was 10.5 (SD = 10.5). The educational level of the team members varied from primary school to university (primary school: 1.1%; high school: 26.5%; high school +: 32.6%; bachelor’s degree: 23.9%; master’s degree: 15.9%).
2.2 Measurements
Shared leadership. For transformational leadership I used the 6 dimensions of Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Moorman and Fetter (1990). The items were reformulated and used with Round Robin method. This means that every team member was asked to answer questions about all the other team members. This way, each team member was scored on different aspects by all the other team members. Because of the Round Robin method, only one item per dimension was chosen. The items were reformulated to fit in this method. An example of a question is “To what extend does each of your team members inspire you with his/ her plans for the future?”. Participants answered the questions on a seven point ‘Likert’ scale (1 = not at all, and 7 = to a very strong degree). Cronbach’s alpha for this scale was .91.
Boundary management was measured with 2 items of Ancona & Caldwell (1992). These items were formulated at the individual level and conducted with a Round Robin method. One of the questions was: “To what extent does each of your team members coordinate activities with external groups?”. The questions were answered on a ‘Likert’ scale (1 = not at all, and 7 = to a very strong degree). Cronbach’s alpha for this scale was .81. Both leadership styles were first measured for each team member, by computing the mean of the scores that the team members had given for each individual team member. After this the scores were aggregated to team level by computing the mean scores for the whole team.
the team learning items. After this the scores were aggregated to team level, by computing the mean scores for the whole team.
Trust. Trust was measured on the individual level with 5 items of Simons and Petersons (2000). An example of an item is: “I expect the complete truth of my team members”. Answers could be given on a seven point ‘Likert’ scale (1 = disagree completely, and 7 = agree completely). Chronbach’s alpha for this scale was .89. Before the data analysis, these individual scores were aggregated to the team level, by computing the mean scores for the whole team.
2.3 Data Analysis
In order to see whether shared leadership and team learning are related, and what the effect of trust would be, a multi regression analysis was conducted, consisting of three steps. First the control variable was put in the analysis: ‘team size’. The teams that took part in the inquiry differed considerable in size. Research has shown that team size can influence team cohesiveness and internal communication (Van der Vegt & Bunderson, 2005), which can influence the amount of team learning in a team. I therefore controlled for team size in further analysis. In the next step, the independent variables – leadership behavior: boundary management and transformational leadership, and trust – were added. In the final step, the interaction term between shared leadership and trust was added to the analysis. This way the two-way interaction was tested.
3. RESULTS
3.1 Descriptive Statistics
TABLE 1
Descriptive Statistics and Pearson Correlations
M SD 1 2 3 4 1. Team size 7.44 2.70 2. Team learning 4.48 .71 -.02 3. Transformational leadership 4.18 .49 -.13 .29 4. Boundary management 4.20 .53 -.05 .29 .63** 5. Trust 5.09 .75 -.11 .35* .49** .19 n = 39
* Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed) ** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed)
3.2 Hypotheses
The model about the relationship between shared transformational leadership and team learning, and the influence of trust was significant (R² = .24, p = .05). However, I found no significant relation for the main effect of transformational leadership on team learning (b = .15, p = .40). Hypotheses 1a was therefore rejected. The interaction term did have a significant relation with team learning (b = .25, p = .05). Shared transformational leadership and trust together relate to team learning, hypothesis 2a was therefore supported. The regression analysis is presented in table 2. Figure 2 shows the relationship between transformational leadership and team learning, and the influence of trust.
TABLE 2
Hierarchical Regression of Transformational Leadership Team Learning Step Variable 1 2 3 1 Team size -.02 .03 .10 2 Transformational leadership .15 .19 Trust .28 .28 3 Interaction term .25* R² .00 .14* .24* ∆ R² .00 .14* .10*
The non standardized regression coefficients are shown. n = 39 * p < .10
FIGURE 2
Relation between Transformational Leadership and Team learning, and the Influence of Trust
The model about the relationship between shared boundary management and team learning, and the influence of trust was not supported by the results (R² = .21, p = .25). The results did not support the main effect of boundary management on team learning
(b = .23, p = .15). Hypotheses 1b was rejected. Also, the relation between the interaction term and team learning was not supported by the results (b = 19, p = .25). Therefore hypotheses 2b was rejected. This regression analysis is presented in table 3.
TABLE 3
Hierarchical Regression of Boundary Management Team Learning Step Variable 1 2 3 1 Team size -.02 .02 .08 2 Boundary management .23 .16 Trust .31* .28* 3 Interaction term .19 R² .00 .18** .21 ∆ R² .00 .18** .03
The non standardized regression coefficients are shown. n = 39 * p < .10
4. DISCUSSION
4.1 Findings
The goal of this research was to assess the relationship between shared leadership and team learning. I expected that more shared leadership would relate to more team learning. Shared leadership was translated into two leadership styles: transformational leadership and boundary management. The research also focused on the role of trust. Trust should reinforce the relationship between shared leadership and team learning.
Hypotheses 1a was about the relationship between shared transformational leadership and team learning. I expected that more transformational leadership in a team would relate to more team learning. The results showed a relationship between shared transformational leadership and team learning, but it was not found significant. A possible explanation is that only 39 teams took part in the investigation. I suspect that when more teams are investigated, that the relation would be found significant. Earlier research on the relationship between transformational leadership and learning found this relationship between transformational leadership and learning (Amitay, Popper & Lipshitz, 2005; Aragón-Correa et al., 2007; García-Morales, Llorens-Montes & Verdú-Jover, 2006). When teams engage in shared transformational leadership, team members stimulate learning experiences (Hater & Bass, 1988) and provide intellectual stimulation to the others in the team (Pearce & Conger, 2003). Transformational team members also promote team members’ participation in team decisions and activities. They do this by providing the other team members with direction, energy, and support for learning, and by promoting inspirational motivation, and self confidence among team members (Aragón-Correa et al., 2007). This way transformational team members stimulate the team to learn. Future research could investigate whether this relationship between shared transformational leadership and team learning is significant when more teams are surveyed.
This study also looked at the relation between shared boundary management and team learning (hypotheses 1b). The results show that teams that engage in shared boundary management not necessarily learn more. This indicates that receiving information from outside is not sufficient for teams to learn. I expected that when teams would get the chance to learn, by receiving information from boundary managers, that they would show more team learning. But the team does not explore knowledge through experimentation, does not combine insights through reflective communication, and does not explicate and specify what has been learned through codification, which are important learning activities (Gibson & Vermeulen, 2003). The team thus does not take any action to learn, which is essential for team learning (Edmondson, 2002). Edmondson (2002) argues that some teams don’t learn because there are no striking mismatches between current team routines and environmental conditions. Even when these teams note some mismatches they prefer to hold on to current routines. Team learning does occur according to Edmondson when team leader behaviors encourage input and discussion, resulting in perceptions of psychological safety, and when tasks require interaction (Edmondson, 2002). Boundary team managers don’t stimulate each other to take action to learn, they don’t encourage other team members to give input or start discussions. The team then does not learn. It only receives information from its boundary managers, but does not reflect on it. Future research could indicate what would motivate teams exhibiting shared boundary management to engage in learning activities. This way, teams can benefit more from the information that boundary managers offer and learn more.
4.2 Theoretical Implications
This empirical study has several theoretical implications. First, it shows that leadership in teams is shared. Not only formal team leaders lead the team, but team members also exhibit leadership behavior. Both shared transformational leadership and shared boundary management showed high ratings in the results. Until now little empirical research was done on this subject (Pearce and Conger, 2003; Mehra et al, 2006; Ensley et al., 2006). This study shows that shared leadership is not just a theoretical concept. Second, the results show that trust is important for team learning. In the regression analysis with transformational leadership it had twice as much influence on team learning, as transformational leadership did (see table 2). In the regression analysis with boundary management, trust showed a significant relationship with team learning (see table 3). Future research could further elaborate this relationship.
4.3 Practical Implications
This research has important implications for organizations, especially for those that rely on innovative teams, in which team learning is important. Examples of such teams are new product development teams and research teams. Organizations can promote team learning in those teams by encouraging the team members to lead each other with a transformational style, and by stimulating trust within those teams. According to Bass (1990) team members can be trained into transformational leaders. Organizations could train their teams to exhibit transformational leadership. They could also test the level of trust in their teams and indicate factors that account for lower trust. When these factors are found, the management can try to reduce these factors. With these actions an organization can enhance team learning.
4.4 Limitations and Strong Points of this Research
part in this investigation. I expect that the results would be more significant when more teams were to be investigated. Future research could indicate this.
A strong point of this research is the measurement of shared leadership. The leadership styles were measured with a Round Robin method. All team members were judged on their transformational leadership behavior and boundary management activities by all other team members. By using different perspectives, a more objective measurement was conducted. Another strong point is that the teams had different tasks and were located at different kinds of organizations. The organizations differed from a bank to a newspaper press. The teams differed from a management team to a student board. By using different teams in different organizations, the influence of the organizational setting and team task were limited.
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