Shared leadership and trust: A two study investigation of the relationship, antecedents and boundary conditions on several levels of an organization

Abstract

In this dissertation, the reciprocal relationship between shared leadership and trust on different levels of an organization (top-management to team members) is investigated in two studies. Furthermore, the focus are antecedents and boundary conditions (empowering leadership, vision communication, voice, feedback seeking and perceives team support) that may shape this relationship. We found at the top-management and middle management, by using a multilevel analysis, significant positive associations between organizational trust and empowering leadership, and empowering leadership and shared leadership. In addition, there was a significant positive mediation of empowering leadership for the relationship between organizational trust and shared leadership. At team leader and team member level, by using a structural equation model, we found a significant positive relation of voice on shared leadership and perceived team support on team trust of the team leader. Keywords: Shared leadership, empowering leadership, organizational trust, vision communication, voice, perceived team support, feedback seeking, followership-theory, trickle-down-effect, top-management