A PROPOSED FRAMEWORK FOR MOVING ORGANISATIONAL TEAMS TOWARDS SHARED LEADERSHIP

The challenges facing organisations today require an exhaustive review of the strategic role of leadership. The complex and ambiguous situations encountered by the contemporary organisation make it difficult for a single external leader to perform all leadership functions successfully. In this regard, it is necessary to explore new types of leadership capable of providing an effective response to new needs. A solution to this problem in the form of shared leadership and engaging the potential of entire organisations has been identified. Therefore, the purpose of this conceptual paper is to identify and map factors that support the development of shared leadership in organisations. Antecedent factors that are likely to influence the development of shared leadership are the internal team environment, comprising a shared purpose, social support, voice, and the components of shared leadership. An integrative literature approach was conducted to review, critique and express what the literature says about the antecedent factors that influence shared leadership emergence in organisations. Based on the reviews, this paper makes a valuable contribution to the literature on shared leadership by proposing a five-step sequential staircase framework consisting of conditions and actions that would be required to move teams in organisations towards shared leadership. The proposed framework gives a relatively clear indication of the organisational environment that needs to be established for effective implementation of shared leadership. From the researcher’s perspective, the value of knowing the operational conditions, the implications of and the existing critique of shared leadership could constitute a foundation from which to conduct new research.