The antecedents of engagement in team leadership: A leader-member interaction perspective

To better understand what factors facilitate team members to collectively engage in team leadership, we defined engagement in team leadership as the extent to which a team member undertakes team leadership responsibilities and perform team leadership functions, and investigated how formal team leader and team member collectively influence team member’s engagement in team leadership during team transition and action phases. Using multi-source data collected from school principals and school management team members, we found that personal initiative was positively related to engagement in team leadership both during team transition phases and during team action phases. The positive effect of formal team leader’s managerial openness on team member’s engagement in team leadership was more significant and stronger during team transition phases than during team action phases. Moreover, during team transition phases, power distance orientation strengthened the effects of formal team leader’s managerial openness on engagement in team leadership, and it attenuated the effect of personal initiative on engagement in team leadership when formal team leader’s managerial openness was low. In sum, this study opens new avenues for research on the antecedents of engagement in team leadership. Copyright © 2015 Academy of Management.