Developing collective leadership: the role of complexity

Collective leadership scholars suggest that the complexity of many contemporary organizations requires new forms of leadership practice (Huxham & Vangen, 2005) that depart from traditional heroic models (Bloomfield et al., 2024). They investigated collective or ‘plural’ leadership in which multiple leadership actors are involved in the co-creation of leadership (Empson et al., 2023), adopting a relational view of leadership that departs from traditional behavioral and cognitive models. Despite several theoretical works having tried to define what collective leadership is (Collinson, 2018; Ospina et al., 2020), a common definition has yet to be achieved. Although the theoretical discussion on collective leadership has experienced a surge in the last years, empirical work on the topic is still scarce. Specifically, many scholars advocate the need to understand how to develop collective leadership(Gronn, 2002; Murphy et al., 2017), and embrace issues of process in collective leadership research (Fairhurst et al., 2020). In doing so, Croft and colleagues (Croft et al., 2022)argue the need to account for contextual influences that may explain how collective leadership develops in complex organizational environments. Indeed, collective leadership is commonly desired when addressing complex problems (Ospina et al., 2020), but so far complexity has not been accounted for in our understandings of collective leadership (Croft et al., 2022). Previous studies analyzing the development of collective leadership focused on strategic ambiguity and reification practices as ways to achieve three key characteristics of collective leadership, namely an agreed direction about what the collective is trying to achieve; alignment and coordination of activities; and commitment to the success of the collective (Cullen et al., 2012; Gronn, 2002) Partial achievement of these three components (that is for instance agreed direction with no commitment to the collective) resemble other forms of collective work that are not collective leadership (Croft et al., 2022) but may emerge in the process of pursuing collective leadership. While reification practices may represent a key component for shared commitment that moves actors towards a common feeling, it may not be enough to achieve a common direction (Croft et al., 2022)especially in turbulent and ambiguous contexts. Ambiguity is indeed considered a “double edge sword” (Abdallah & Langley, 2014), which may promote collective driving but also conflict depending on the context. To advance the current literature we deepen the analysis of this contextual inference trying to understand the role of complexity in the equation. We propose that besides reification practices to enhance shared commitment, to develop collective leadership actors adopt complexity management practices that explain the creation of a shared direction. Drawing on a one-and-a-half-year study, involving 47 interviews and 53 hours of observation, we explore how collective leadership developed in the board of directors of the company CAUL. CAUL faced a steep expansion during the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath but also increased competition and sudden contextual problems that intensified the ambiguity of the strategic directions to pursue. In this context, the company's president decided to establish a board of directors with the aim of fostering collective leadership within the group. In this way, the president articulated a narrative of collective leadership, which, however, had not yet been enacted (Empson et al., 2023). Using an abductive approach (Mantere & Ketokivi, 2013) and a processual frame, we analyze how collective leadership unfolds in this complex environment, highlighting the role of reification and complexity management practices.