Joint effects of shared and transformational leadership on performance in street‐level bureaucracies: Evidence from the educational sector

• Published date: 01 November 2022
• Author: Urszula Lagowska,Filipe Sobral,Gustavo Tavares
• Date: 01 November 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13526

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Joint effects of shared and transformational leadership on

performance in street-level bureaucracies: Evidence from the

educational sector

Urszula Lagowska

1

| Filipe Sobral

2

| Gustavo Tavares

3

1

Department of People and Organisations,

NEOMA Business School, Reims, France

2

Getulio Vargas Foundation, Brazilian School of

Public and Business Administration in Rio de

Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

3

Insper Institute of Education and Research, S˜

ao

Paulo, Brazil

Correspondence

Urszula Lagowska, Department of People and

Organisations, NEOMA Business School, 59 Rue

Pierre Taittinger, 51100 Reims, France.

Email: urszula.lagowska@neoma-bs.fr

Funding information

Coordenaç˜

ao de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de

Nível Superior, Grant/Award Number: 001;

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento

Científico e Tecnol

ogico, Grant/Award Number:

307141/2019; Fundaç˜

ao Carlos Chagas Filho de

Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro,

Grant/Award Number: 202663/2019

Abstract

Recent theories of public administration emphasize the importance of leadership

as shared property. This research focuses on the role of the interaction between

vertical and shared leadership in promoting agency performance. Specifically, it

examines the joint effects of shared leadership and transformational leadership on

team empowerment and performance in public settings. Based on field study data

collected from 74 street-level bureaucracies and 423 public servants in Brazil, we

find evidence that vertical transformational leadership strengthens the direct rela-

tionship between shared leadership and team empowerment as well as the indi-

rect relationship between shared leadership and school performance through

team empowerment (a moderated-mediation model). The findings of this study

suggest that greater attention should be paid to the dynamics of shared and verti-

cal leadership structures to better understand their consequences for team pro-

cesses and outcomes in public settings.

Evidence for Practice

•Agencies with higher levels of shared leadership performed significantly better

due to an increased sense of empowerment among employees.

•Public managers enhanced the effects of shared leadership on agency perfor-

mance by demonstrating transformational leadership.

•To harness the potential of shared leadership in the public sector, organizations

should introduce managerial training that develops transformational leaders

who offer clear vision, motivate, and inspire employees.

INTRODUCTION

Scholars have questioned the premise that leadership in

public contexts belongs to a single individual with an

executive title (Denhardt & Denhardt, 2007; Ospina, 2017),

suggesting instead that leadership can be enacted as a

shared property that is distributed among multiple indi-

viduals regardless of their status (Gronn, 2002). By relying

on collective forms of leadership, agencies can effectively

use employees’skills and resources to tackle complex

issues bureaucrats face daily (Crosby et al., 2017). Further,

it is argued that shared leadership aligns better with

western democratic values (Wegge et al., 2012) and is

especially suitable for street-level bureaucracies, where

employees enjoy a significant level of discretion in their

daily tasks (Vinzant & Crothers, 1996).

However, the interaction between the bottom-up influ-

ence of the organizational members and the behaviors of

public managers remains to be fully explored (Pearce &

Sims, 2002). Although some studies identify vertical leader-

ship as an antecedent of shared leadership in commercial

organizations (Carson et al., 2007), public managers cannot

fully control leadership processes in their agencies because

their subordinates engage in leadership roles independently,

Received: 8 May 2021 Revised: 22 May 2022 Accepted: 23 May 2022

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13526

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium,

provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

© 2022 The Authors. Public Administration Review published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Society for Public Administration.

1042 Public Admin Rev. 2022;82:1042–1057.

wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/puar

by the very nature of their work (e.g., street-level bureaucra-

cies; Vinzant & Crothers, 1996). Furthermore, public leaders

must often collaborate with existing team structures because

they are appointed for a fixed mandate (Miller, 2013). As

such, public managers, who are still part of the traditional

formal authority structure and are largely accountable for

the organizational outcomes (Currie & Lockett, 2011;Pearce

et al., 2018), have an incentive to help teams with shared

leadership achieve better organizational outcomes (Wang

et al., 2014) rather than simply delegate tasks to them. There-

fore, we argue, that more research is needed to understand

what specific behaviors of formal leaders can enhance

(moderate) the effectiveness of informal shared leadership

for organizational processes and outcomes (Hoch, 2013;

Morgeson et al., 2010).

Shared leadership is described as a form of collective

governance where multiple individuals influence one

another to attain a common goal (Pearce & Sims, 2000).

Although the literature shows a positive impact of shared

leadership on collective motivational states, such as team

empowerment (e.g., Nicolaides et al., 2014), it also recog-

nizes that the enactment of leadership roles by multiple

individuals is not without its challenges, citing such proce-

ssual difficulties as ineffective communication, increased

complexity and uncertainty (Grissom, 2012;Murphyetal.,

2017). These limitations of shared leadership can undermine

team-level motivation (Hu & Liden, 2011), especially in pub-

lic organizations, where goals are inherently more ambigu-

ous (Chun & Rainey, 2005). In this context, vertical leaders,

who possess relatively higher organizational status, formal

authority, ability to control resources, and outcome account-

ability (Currie & Lockett, 2011),mayplayanimportantrole

in hindering or enhancing the effectiveness of informal

shared leadership structures (Morgeson et al., 2010;Ran&

Qi, 2018; Zeier et al., 2018). In other words, informal shared

leadership structures do not exist in a vacuum and by

exploring their co-dependency on vertical leadership forms,

we respond to calls for more research on “relationship

between hierarchical leadership and more plural forms”

(Holm & Fairhurst, 2018,p.694).

Transformational leadership seems particularly well-

suited to secure followers’support and engagement in

pursuing organizational objectives due to its influence on

information interpretation through goal clarification and

commitment toward common goals (Jong & Faerman,

2020; Moynihan et al., 2011). As such, transformational

leaders can help teams with multiple informal leaders to

avoid process losses inherent to shared leadership struc-

tures and strengthen positive motivational states within

teams. Specifically, we draw on goal-setting and self-

determination theories (Deci et al., 1989; Locke & Latham,

2013) to propose that transformational leaders will

enhance the relationship between shared leadership and

team empowerment, referred to as a collective motivational

state arising from team members’shared positive evaluation

of their organizational tasks (Kirkman & Rosen, 1999). Fur-

ther, we predict that vertical transformational leadership will

strengthen the indirect effect of shared leadership on team

performance via team empowerment (a moderated-

mediation model).

We tested our theoretical model in a field study with

survey data from 74 street-level bureaucracies (public

schools) located in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, selected using a

probabilistic stratified sampling procedure (Groves

et al., 2011). Further, we use objective secondary data

provided by the Local Board of Education as our depen-

dent variable (school performance) and control variables.

Overall, this article addresses recent calls for an empirical

examination of the interplay between vertical and hori-

zontal forms of leadership (Holm & Fairhurst, 2018; Zhu

et al., 2018) as well as its consequences in the context of

education (Pearce et al., 2018) and contingencies of

shared leadership in the broader domain of public admin-

istration (Currie & Lockett, 2011; Sweeney et al., 2019).

The study provides evidence that in the context of public

organizations, especially in street-level bureaucracies,

these two forms of leadership structure can co-exist, their

effects are co-dependent, and their interaction is relevant

to team motivational states and organizational outcomes.

The results suggest that to gain a more complete under-

standing of leadership in public organizations, the joint

effects of informal horizontal and formal vertical leader-

ship structures should be considered.

SHARED LEADERSHIP AND PUBLIC AGENCY

PERFORMANCE

Shared leadership (sometimes called horizontal leadership)

is a framework developed in response to new organizational

realities such as flatter hierarchical structures, increased

complexity, and decentralization (Ospina, 2017). It has been

defined as an emerging team property where multiple team

members willingly influence one another, collectively make

decisions, strategize, and share responsibilities in pursuit of

a common goal (Louis et al., 2010;Pearce&Sims,2000). In

other words, shared leadership is enacted by multiple indi-

viduals regardless of their formal power status, which cre-

ates an environment where members rotate roles and share

accountability, participation is encouraged, collaborative

behaviors emerge, and knowledge and skills resources are

pooled to improve overall performance (Gronn, 2002;

Pearce & Manz, 2005).

Viewed in this way, shared leadership positions itself

as a broader phenomenon than similar concepts, such as

participation in management or participation in manage-

rial decision-making. Specifically, participation in manage-

ment tends to be more related to managerial and human

resource practices aimed at enabling higher employee

input in decision-making (Bartram et al., 2007; Huang

et al., 2010), which may be limited and not necessarily

voluntary (Kahnweiler & Thompson, 2000). In contrast,

shared leadership goes beyond that and focuses on

employee’s perception of their voluntary engagement in

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