Sharing Network Leadership

Edited by:
George B. Graen, University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana (retired)
Joan A. Graen, Graen and Associates

A volume in the series: LMX Leadership: The Series. Editor(s): George B. Graen, University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana (retired).

Published 2009

In this book, we elaborate on the dynamic process of leadership sharing in creative project networks by pointing out that the boundaries and relationships of the networks change over time. As the project requirements evolve, new leaders emerge, make their contribution, and move into support positions. This leadership sharing dynamic is a necessary condition for mature LMX and member-member exchange (MMX). This insight about the sharing of leadership within networks directs us to the process of microbehavior being transformed to meso-options and being converted to macrostrategies. This sequence of micro to macro directs us to a marriage of the formal with the informal organization. At this stage we are post Simon, March, and Weick.

This book is about putting authentic people back into the social creations we call productive organizations—warts and all. The design of these organizations is as old as human civilization. It helped construct ancient Greece, Egypt, and China. It was improved in the West by the Romans and in the East by the Chinese. During more recent times it was improved by the British Empire whose command and control models gradually gave way to the knowledge models of today. This book is about how we can discover the alternative processes by which fallible humans use sense making to continuously improve organizations at the macrostrategy level.

CONTENTS
Foreword, George B. Graen and Joni A. Graen. Preface, George B. Graen and Joni A. Graen. Communication Strategies for Sharing Leadership Within a Creative Team: LMX in Theater Groups, Michael W. Kramer. To Share or Not to Share Leadership: New LMX-MMX Network Leadership or Charismatic Leadership on Creative Projects, George B. Graen. Expanding The Scope: Social Network and Multilevel Perspectives on Leader-Member Exchange, David M. Mayer and Ronald F. Piccolo. Network Factors in Leader-Member Exchange Relationships, Deborah Gibbons and Steven L. Grover. Pushing the Frontier of LMX Research: The Contribution of Triads, Evan Offstein, Ravindranath (Ravi) Madhavan, and Devi R. Gnyawali. An Exploration of the Relationship Between Communication Network Structures Team-Member Exchange Quality and Teamwork, Alex M. Susskind, Kristin Behfar, and Carl P. Borchgrevink. Macrostrategic, Mesostrategic, and Microstrategic Leadership Processes in Loosely Coupled Networks, James Douglas Orton and Gurpreet Dhillon. Emotional Intelligence, Leader-Member Exchange and Individual Contributions to Organizational Social Capital, Melvin L. Smith. Organizational Cynicism: A Field Examination Using Global and Local Social Exchange Relationships and Workplace Outcomes, Pamela Brandes, Diya Das, and Michael Hadani. Leader-Member Exchange and Solidarity Behavior: A Study of Reciprocity and Performance, Birgit Schyns, Brigitte Kroon, and Karin Sanders. The Role Of LMX and Communication in the Goal Setting Process, David J. Henderson, Tanguy Dulac, and Robert C. Liden. Post Simon, March, Weick, and Graen: New Leadership Sharing as a Key to Understanding Organizing, George B. Graen. About the Authors.