Distributed leadership in project teams

Much of the existing leadership literature is underpinned by the view that leadership is a vertical process, whereby one leader exerts influence over a number of followers. Regardless of the particular perspective from which leadership is studied, the assumption that leadership divides leaders from followers and that it is the leader who shapes the process from which collective social action emerges is still very prevalent in the leadership literature (Rost, 1993; Yukl, 2002; Pearce and Conger, 2003). Even the literature on team working has still put considerable emphasis on the role of formal team leaders in shaping team effectiveness (Day et al., 2006), even though the role of formal leaders in shaping collective outcomes is often greatly overestimated (Meindl et al., 1985).