Leading One Another Across Time and Space: Exploring Shared Leadership Functions in Virtual Teams Dirigiendo Uno a Otro en el Tiempo y el Espacio: Explorando las Funciones del Liderazgo Compartido en Equipos Virtuales

Although a tremendous amount of research in the last decade has begun to disentangle interaction factors and performance outcomes associated with virtual teams, significant gaps still exist in our understanding, particularly in terms of virtual team leadership. Shared leadership may be particularly important to virtual teams, where team members’ separation from the leader and from one another may necessitate the distribution of leadership functions. While the sharing of leadership has proven to be advantageous to more traditional forms of vertical leadership, there is a dearth of research concerning how shared leadership operates in, and is influenced by, virtual and distributed environments. Therefore, the goal of the current paper is to provide a framework for doing just this, primarily through presenting propositions and future research needs regarding specific leader functions that may be shared by members of virtual and distributed teams.