Abstract
Building on behavioural leadership theory and structuration theory, we present a two-order theory of leadership. It describes four classes of first-order leadership behaviours (task coordination, substantive task contribution, group maintenance and boundary spanning) and defines second-order leadership as behaviour that influences changes in the structure that guides group action. We argue that second-order leadership is enabled by first-order leadership and is therefore action embedded and grounded in processes that define the social identity of the group. We propose that effective virtual teams will exhibit a paradoxical combination of shared, distributed first-order leadership complemented by strong, concentrated, and centralized second-order leadership. We conclude by suggesting future research that might be conducted to test and further elaborate our theory.
This research was partially supported by NSF Grants 04–14468 and 05–27457. Earlier versions of this paper have been presented at the First International Conference on Open Source Systems, Genova, Italy and the IFIP Working Group 8.2 Oasis Workshop. The authors acknowledge the contributions of Hala Annabi, Chengetai Masango and James Howison.
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Heckman, R., Crowston, K., Misiolek, N. (2007). A Structurational Perspective on Leadership in Virtual Teams. In: Crowston, K., Sieber, S., Wynn, E. (eds) Virtuality and Virtualization. IFIP International Federation for Information Processing, vol 236. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-73025-7_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-73025-7_12
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