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The purpose of this paper is to develop and validate an instrument that can measure distributed leadership (DL) as employees’ active participation in DL tasks. The authors designate this as the distributed leadership agency (DLA).

Data were collected throughout all departments and occupational groups at a merged centralized hospital setting in Denmark. A total of 1,774 employees from 24 hospital departments and 16 occupational groups completed our survey. Structural equation model and confirmatory factor analyses were applied to identify appropriate items and a test for measurement invariance, predictive, discriminant and convergent validity, and ANOVAs were applied to analyse group differences in DLA.

The identified unidimensional questionnaire consists of seven items, as it is different from, but associated with, empowering leadership, organizational influence, attitude to participation and trust in management. As theoretically predicted, DLA is positively related to self-efficacy, job satisfaction and innovative behaviour. Chief physicians, permanent employees and employee representatives scored higher on the scale than the rest of their respective counterparts.

The survey offers a method to assess a distribution of leadership agency in hospital organizations. Such assessment may provide a basis for organizational and leadership development.

The present study provides a reliable and valid quantitative instrument that measures how much employees at all hierarchical levels are involved in concrete leadership activities in the hospital context. Taking a normative perspective the authors could show that DL – measured with the DLA-questionnaire – has positive effects on employees’ behaviour.

The purpose of this study is to elucidate the relationship between perceived employee influence and organizational commitment by applying a multidimensional approach that includes influence perceived to stem from the individual and the team, as well as affective and normative commitment.

A total of 526 out of a population of 732 employees (72 percent reply rate) from four Danish companies in different industries and with different types of teams participated in the questionnaire study.

Results of bootstrapping mediation analyses reveal that a relationship between perceived influence of the team and affective commitment is fully mediated by perceived individual influence. Results of multiple regression analyses show a positive relationship between team and individual influence, and that normative commitment moderated the relationship negatively. The results are to suggest that influence of the team may stimulate employees’ individual influence, and in turn their affective commitment, if their normative commitment is not very high.

Generalization of the results to cultures, which are dissimilar to the Danish should be cautiously considered and further studies are needed to elucidate causality between the variables.

The identification of normative commitment as a variable that can potentially hinder that employees experience their teams to enhance their individual freedom elucidates the conditions that may be behind different current findings in the literature. The finding that suggests that employees need to perceive that they benefit from their team's influence in order to feel more affective committed to their organization adds to knowledge about team work's possible effects for employee attitudes.

Previous studies show that sharing leadership in teams offers potential performance benefits across various contexts. This paper aims to investigate moderators of the effectiveness of shared leadership. In particular, it seeks to explore the moderating effects of team work function – manufacturing versus knowledge team work – and team autonomy.

In order to test the hypotheses, the authors conducted hierarchical regression analyses and ran moderated two‐way regression analyses using a field sample of 552 employees comprising 81 teams in a Danish manufacturing company.

Contrary to expectations, the results demonstrated a non‐significant relationship between shared leadership and team performance. However, as expected, work function significantly moderated this relationship such that shared leadership exhibited a negative relationship with manufacturing team performance and a positive relationship with knowledge team performance. Moreover, team autonomy was positively related to performance, and it significantly moderated the relationship between shared leadership and team performance.

The study provides a potentially useful framework for understanding boundary conditions for the effectiveness of shared leadership. However, since the design of the study is cross‐sectional, direct causation cannot be inferred. Moreover, the study took place within a single organization in a Danish context and, therefore, care must be taken in generalizing the findings without additional evidence from further research.

To the authors' knowledge, the study is the first to obtain evidence which indicates that the success of shared leadership may depend on the team work function and the level of team autonomy.

The purpose of this paper is to measure employees’ attitude toward distributed leadership (DL) practices and investigate the challenges involved in implementing DL practices in Indian organizations.

This study is conducted within an exploratory research framework. The data were collected from 180 young middle-level executives from a diverse group of industry sectors belonging to private and multinational organization located in northern part of India. Unstructured (personal interviews and focus group interviews) and structured interview schedule (questionnaire) were administered to measure employees’ attitude and challenges of implementation.

The qualitative and quantitative analytic strategies were adopted to analyze the data. Results of exploratory factors analysis showed the existence of five underlying dimensions about the significance of DL practices, namely, self-initiatives, improved functioning, achieving organizational goals, accountability and mutual respect. Furthermore, results showed the importance of contextual factors in implementing DL practices namely horizontal structure, professionalism, work commitment and power sharing. Also, the attitudinal dimensions were found to be positively correlated with the dimensions of implementing DL practices in Indian work context.

This study strengthens the importance of measuring employees’ attitudes that can be a good predictor of implementing best practices in organizations. The major limitation of this study is of the small sample size and has been limited to young managers.

This is an original paper based on the empirical data from Indian managers. No study is conducted on the concept of distributing leadership in Indian work context on a similar or related theme.

In order to contribute to the understanding of affective commitment towards distinct workplace targets, the purpose of this paper is to develop and validate a Multitarget Affective Commitment Scale (MACS) through two data collections. The MACS uses similarly worded items for distinct targets and reflects the most recent theoretical development of affective commitment.

In the first data collection, items from previous commitment scales were tested through the social network service Facebook (n=305). The second data collection was conducted in the healthcare system of Denmark (n=496) using survey questionnaires.

In Study 1, exploratory factor analyses were conducted to reduce the items based on the Facebook data. In Study 2, the authors confirm the findings of Study 1 and further reduce the items based on the healthcare sample. The healthcare sample is also used in Study 3, where the authors validate the MACS by investigating its relationship with predictors, correlates, and outcomes.

The results suggest that the MACS are a reliable and valid measure of affective commitment compatible with the diverse targets to which affective commitment often occurs. Consequently, the MACS is applicable for research investigating multiply affective commitments, thereby advancing the understanding of interactions between affective commitments and diverse targets, among other applications.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of the cognitive styles of leaders on knowledge management practices in a public sector organisation in India.

The data were gathered from 210 middle and senior managers who were employed in different projects across the country. Self‐reported questionnaires were administered to collect the data on the cognitive styles of leaders and knowledge management practices.

The results of exploratory factor analysis showed three significant factors of cognitive styles – i.e. radical, innovative‐collaborator, and adaptor. The knowledge management questionnaire had five dimensions – i.e. KM process, KM leadership, KM culture, KM technology, and KM measurement. The results of regression analysis showed a negative impact of the radical and innovative‐collaborator styles, while the adaptor style had a positive impact on knowledge management practices.

This study was conducted in a large thermal power generation organisation in India. Hence, its generalisability is limited to other similar contexts. Public sector work norms and organisational size may influence the interpretation of the results.

The results show the relevance of the adaptor style of thinking in promoting knowledge management practices, which is consistent with the prevailing public sector work norms in India, which do not support any radical changes in their ways of working and solving problems.

This is an empirical study about the relationship between cognitive styles of leaders and knowledge management practices in the Indian work context, and no such study exists in the literature.

Employees constitute an important source of innovation in organizations. Innovation management strategies often include attempts of stimulating employees' innovative contribution by instilling managerial trust and granting job autonomy. However, the authors suggest and investigate the role of employees' distributed leadership agency (DLA) in hospital employee-driven innovation.

The authors tested the hypotheses using survey data from 1,536 nonmanagerial employees at a hospital in Denmark. In order to deal with a methodological risk of survey designs, the authors assessed and adjusted the results for common method variance (CMV).

The authors validated a DLA measurement instrument and found an indirect relationship between job autonomy and trust in management on the one hand, via DLA, and with idea generation, promotion and implementation on the other hand. In addition, the results showed a small direct relationship between job autonomy and the three innovative behaviors. The results showed that CMV did bias relationships and reliabilities but only little.

The study introduces distributed leadership to the field of innovation management and confirms that this concept is highly relevant for employee innovation. In order to strengthen an organization's innovative potential, leaders may not only need to grant autonomy and instill trust in their employees, but also gain from employee innovation by distributing leadership tasks to employees.

This study is one of the first to introduce distributed leadership to the field of employee innovation management. By identifying distributed leadership as a key variable, the findings add to one’s extant understanding of how employee involvement encourages employee innovation.