A social network approach was used to investigate the structural features of various emergent leadership systems in a large financial organization (n = 137), including transactional and transformational-style leadership relations. Results indicate that macro-level patterns of leadership nominations may be explained by a small number of underlying structural features, some of which vary across types of leadership networks. Leadership nominations were shown to be less hierarchical, more reciprocal, and more triadic than traditionally thought. On top of effects associated with individual differences in sex, supervisor status, tenure, and physical location, leadership networks displayed tendencies towards reciprocity and loose core-periphery structures based on transitive hierarchies. There was also some evidence that transformational leadership networks tended to be slightly less centralized and more transitive than transactional leadership networks. Implications for bridging leadership theory across levels of analysis are discussed.

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Small groups are integral for many activities in the foreign language classroom and their pedagogical importance is well established. Despite the widespread use of groups in foreign language education, there is a dearth of research investigating group processes and the impact of emergent leaders within these groups. This mixed-methods, longitudinal study was designed to first establish the presence of emergent leaders within an SLA context, and then to investigate the factors influencing who will emerge as the leader, and the impact they have on the views and performance of the group. First-year students majoring in science at a private university in western Japan were placed into three English Communication classes depending on their major within the school, and further randomly assigned to small groups of three to four people within each class. Students worked together in these groups for the first semester spanning 14 weeks and were required to take part in group presentations and group discussions. Measures of aural and general English ability, English communication self-efficacy, and the Big Five dimensions of personality were used to predict who would emerge as leaders within each group, and group and individual change was tracked using measures of self- and collective-efficacy. Participant and video observation, and interview data were used to provide rich description of the intra-group processes. In the second semester the students were allowed to self-select their groups, which were then fixed for the 14-week course. The first finding of the study was that leaders emerged in the small groups in this context, and proficiency in English was found to be the only consistent predictor of group leader emergence, with extroversion predicting initial perceptions of leadership only. The second finding of the study was that individuals' perceived leadership was relatively stable when in the same group, but that when the group makeup was changed there were large differences in the perceived leadership scores, suggesting that leadership behavior depends on the group in which students are in, and that group makeup influences individual student behavior. The third finding was that different types of leader were found to exist, with visible leaders who were easily identified by the teacher, and invisible leaders who were recognized by group members to be leader, but not clear to the teacher. The fourth finding was that collective-efficacy was existed as a group-level construct in this context, and growth models showed that self-efficacy increased for students in both the first and second semesters, and that the group experiences in the first semester seemed to influence rates of change in self-efficacy in the second semester, suggesting that the products of previous group experiences carry into subsequent group work and affect attitudes and behavior. The fifth finding was that students select group members based on friendship, but that students had mixed preferences with regard the choice between random group formation and self-selection into groups. Students almost universally felt that changing group members at regular intervals of several weeks was beneficial. Overall the study highlighted the importance of group makeup, and particularly leadership in this context, and showed that behavior in the language classroom was heavily influenced by group members. / Applied Linguistics

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The influence of leadership on team success has been noted extensively in research and practice. However, as organizations move to flatter team based structures with workers communicating virtually across space and time, our conceptualization of team leadership must change to meet these new workplace demands. Given this need, the current study aims to begin untangling the effects of distribution and virtuality on team leadership structure and subsequent team outcomes that may be affected by differences in conceptualizing such structures. Specifically, the goals of this study were threefold. First, this study investigated how the physical distribution of members may impact perceptions of team leadership structure, depending on virtual tool type utilized for communicating. Second, this study explored how different indices of team leadership structure may have different influences on team outcomes, specifically in terms of conceptualizing the degree to which multiple members are perceived as collectively enacting particular leadership behaviors via a network density metric, and conceptualizing team leadership in regards to the specialization of members into particular behavioral roles, as captured via role distance and role variety indices. Finally, this study expanded on current research regarding team leadership structure by examining how the collective enactment of particular leadership (i.e., structuring/planning, problem solving, supporting social climate) behaviors may facilitate specific teamwork processes (i.e., transition, action, interpersonal), leading to enhanced team performance, as well as how leadership role specialization may impact overall teamwork and team performance. Findings from a laboratory study of 188 teams participating in a simulated decision making task reveal a significant interaction for the influences of physical distribution and iv virtuality on perceptions of leadership structure, such that less distributed teams (i.e., those with fewer isolated members) were more likely to perceive their distributed members as participating in the collective enactment of necessary leadership responsibilities when communicating via richer media (i.e., videoconferencing, teleconferencing) than less rich media (i.e., instant messaging). However, virtuality and distribution did not impact the degree to which members were perceived as specializing in a particular leadership role, or the overall variety of leadership roles being performed. In terms of team outcomes, the perceived collective enactment of leadership emanating from distributed team members significantly predicted teamwork, while the perceived collective leadership of collocated members did not have a significant impact. Specifically, greater distributed team member involvement in the collective enactment of structuring/planning leadership positively impacted team transition processes, while the collective enactment of supporting the social climate positively predicted team interpersonal processes. Although the relationship between perceived leadership role specialization, in terms of role distance and role variety, and team performance was mediated by overall teamwork processes as expected, leadership role specialization had a negative impact on overall teamwork. Finally, while team action processes did not serve to mediate the relationship between perceived problem solving network density and team performance, team transition processes mediated the relationships between the collective enactment of structuring/planning for distributed members and team performance. The collective enactment of supporting the social climate by distributed team members and its relationship to team performance was also mediated by interpersonal teamwork processes. Together, these results reveal the importance in considering context, specifically virtuality and physical distribution, when designing, developing v and maintaining effective team leadership, teamwork, and team performance. Furthermore, they provide unique insight regarding how different configurations of leadership may be possible in teams. Study limitations, practical implications, and recommendations for future research and practice are further discussed.

A Grounded Theory of Emergent Leadership in Nonhierarchical Virtual Teams by Randall David Fleming MS, Colorado Technical University, 2008 BA, The Ohio State University, 1984 Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Management Walden University November 2018

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