Shared Leadership Regulates Operational Team Performance in the Presence of Extreme Decisional Consensus/Conflict: Evidences from Business Process Reengineering

Abstract

This study focuses on decision-making within operational teams. Grounding our argumentation on group decision-making literature, we argue that adverse behavior patterns may affect the way in which consensus is achieved within the team, and that team performance has an inverted U-shaped relationship with the level of consensus. Then, by relying on leadership literature, we pose the hypothesis that the level of shared leadership inside the group moderates this U-shaped relationship. To empirically test our literature-based argumentation, we use longitudinal data collected in the years 2014 and 2015 from business process reengineering projects, each lasting three months, conducted by 141 master of science students grouped in 34 teams. We conclude by emphasizing that it is important to control for the occurrence of behaviors which lead to “fake” consensus within operational teams, by observing the individuals’ satisfaction with respect to the group decision as well as their active participation in the decision-making process.