Research Evidence
Although a number of authors [beginning with
Mary Parker Follett (1924)] have discussed the
idea of shared leadership, it has only gained
attention in the academic leadership literature
recently, and relatively few studies have tried
to measure shared leadership. One exception
is the work by Avolio & Bass (1995). In their
study, instead of raters evaluating the individual
leader, the target of ratings was the team itself.
Avolio & Bass (1995) report that the teamlevel
measures of transformational and transactional
leadership positively predicted performance
similar to the individual-level measures
in previous research.