How Vertical Leadership Affects Shared Leadership Through Team Identification

Abstract

Shared forms of leadership have become increasingly important for organizational success. While research has emphasized that a single leader’s engagement in specific leadership behaviors (vertical leadership) can foster team members’ engagement in shared leadership behaviors, knowledge on the mediating processes is limited. Drawing on social identity theory, we argue that a single leader’s engagement in transformational leadership fosters team members’ identification with their team, which leads to team members’ engagement in shared transformational leadership and shared contingent reward. To test this, we collected data from 698 team members in 92 teams in a German financial services company. Team identification was found to be positively related to shared transformational leadership and shared contingent reward, and mediated the relationships between vertical transformational leadership and shared transformational leadership and shared contingent reward. Our findings underline the importance of team members’ identification processes for the interrelations of vertical and shared leadership.