Exploring the interaction between vertical and shared leadership in information systems development projects

Leadership is a critical issue in the management of information systems development (ISD) projects. Recently, the importance of shared leadership (SL) has been emphasized alongside traditional vertical leadership (VL). Based on role theory, this study investigates the interactions between VL and SL within ISD project teamwork. We first propose value diversity reduces system quality by preventing a project team from adopting SL strategies. We further hypothesize that interventions by the formally assigned leader will ease the negative impact of value diversity on SL, and provide remedies when the effectiveness of SL is low. We tested these concepts using data collected from 90 ISD teams, and the results aligned well with our expectations (1) that SL partially mediates the negative impact of value diversity on system quality, and (2) that effective VL can both mitigate the adverse impacts of value diversity on SL, and stabilize teamwork when SL is absent.