Impact of Shared Leadership on Project Team Performance: Mediating Role of Knowledge Sharing and Moderating Role of Project Manager’s Ambidexterity

The present research investigates shared leadership and its antecedents in the project-based organizations operating in Pakistan’s twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad. The present study combines the quadratic model of shared leadership with the literature of leadership styles such as Task Orientation shared leadership, Relation Orientation shared leadership, Change Orientation shared leadership, and Micro-Political Orientation shared leadership, which lead to enhanced project team performance via knowledge sharing. The project manager's ambidexterity is also considered in the hypothesized link as a moderator. The data was collected from 291 respondents from different project-based organizations. The results delineate that Task Orientation shared leadership, Change Orientation shared leadership, Relation Orientation shared leadership, and Micro-Political Orientation shared leadership, along with knowledge sharing, have a significant and positive influence on project team performance. Moreover, knowledge sharing mediates the relationship between shared leadership (Task Orientation shared leadership, Change Orientation shared leadership, Relation Orientation shared leadership, and Micro-Political Orientation shared leadership) and project team performance. In addition, the exploitative and explorative behavior of the project manager, playing the role of moderator, was also tested. The results have shown a significant impact of moderation on Task Orientation shared leadership and Change Orientation shared leadership but an insignificant impact on Relation Orientation shared leadership and Micro-Political Orientation shared leadership for exploitative behavior, and moderated the relationship with Task Orientation shared leadership only for explorative behavior respectively.