Lindsay Larson, Megan Chan, Diego Gomez-Zara, Leslie DeChurch, and Noshir Contractor
Manuscript in progress; please contact Megan for a working draft
Abstract: Fluid, overlapping, geographically dispersed teams challenge traditional role-based conceptions of leadership. In multiteam-membership settings, leader–follower ties must span functional and location boundaries yet often emerge informally rather than through positional authority. Integrating identity-based theories of leadership with network perspectives, we develop and test a model of congruent leadership emergence—relationships jointly claimed and granted—within interdependent intergroup collaborations. In a high-fidelity space-exploration simulation, 243 participants worked in 26 twelve-person systems comprising colocated crews and remote mission-control teams. Exponential random graph models of intersecting leadership-claim and -grant networks reveal how competing functional versus divisional identities shape who leads and who follows across boundaries. Results show that leadership tended to be centralized, reciprocated, and characterized by closure, with individuals more likely to seek and recognize leadership from those within their own functional teams or physical locations, yet identification with divisional teams was a stronger predictor of congruent leadership than identification with functional groups. While congruent leadership perceptions were not influenced by functional identification alone, both leader and follower behaviors were shaped by social proximity and shared group membership rather than asymmetry or individual self-perception. Our findings advance relational, networked views of leadership by uncovering the social-motivational principles that enable connected leadership to emerge in “blurry” intergroup contexts.
Research supported by NASA awards NNX15AM32G, 80NSSC18K0221, and 80NSSC18K0276
Megan Chan 