Leading One Another Across Time and Space: Exploring Shared Leadership Functions in Virtual Teams

Abstract. Although a tremendous amount of research in the last decade has begun to disentangle interac-tion factors and performance outcomes associated with virtual teams, significant gaps still exist in our understanding, particularly in terms of virtual team leadership. Shared leadership may be particularly important to virtual teams, where team members ’ separation from the leader and from one another may necessitate the distribution of leadership functions. While the sharing of leadership has proven to be advan-tageous to more traditional forms of vertical leadership, there is a dearth of research concerning how shared leadership operates in, and is influenced by, virtual and distributed environments. Therefore, the goal of the current paper is to provide a framework for doing just this, primarily through presenting propo-sitions and future research needs regarding specific leader functions that may be shared by members of virtual and distributed teams. Key words: Shared leadership, team performance, virtual teams, distributed teams. Resumen. Aunque una gran cantidad de investigación en la última década ha comenzado a distinguir los factores de interacción y los resultados de rendimiento asociados con los equipos virtuales, aún existen importantes lagunas en nuestro conocimiento, sobre todo en términos de liderazgo de un equipo virtual. El liderazgo compartido puede ser particularmente importante para los equipos virtuales, donde la separació