Vertical and Shared Leadership as Predictors of Team Effectiveness: Insights from Healthcare Sector in a Developing Country

Team effectiveness is the result of teamwork, with teams scoring high in job performance, job satisfaction, and team viability. In healthcare, teamwork is decisive for the well-being of patients and their satisfaction. Among the scholars, there is an ongoing debate about the best leadership approach to maximize team effectiveness. In this paper, we start from the seminal work of Pearce & Sims (2002) that investigates vertical versus shared leadership as predictors of the effectiveness. Team effectiveness has been analyzed according the constructs of team processes and performance. The vertical/shared leadership have been analyzed from their main constructs- vertical/shared transactional leadership, vertical/shared transformational leadership, and vertical/shared empowering leadership. Differently from Pearce & Sims (2002), this study was conducted in the healthcare sector of a developing country. Data was collected from a questionnaire distributed to 17 public and private healthcare teams as assessed from two sources- team leaders and team members. The sample was composed of 138 participants from the healthcare personnel, distributed in 17 diverse teams. From literature six hypotheses has been developed and descriptive and inferential statistics are also provided. Team effectiveness was found to be significantly predicted by both vertical leadership and shared leadership. The shared leadership was found to be significant predictor of team effectiveness in all its three constructs (transactional, transformational, and empowering shared leadership), whereas the vertical leadership was found to be significant predictor of team effectiveness in only two constructs (transformational and empowering vertical leadership). Theoretical and practical implications for managers in healthcare sector are also provided.