Leadership network and team performance in interactive contests

Over the years, the concept of leadership has experienced a paradigm shift - from solitary leader (centralized leadership) to de-centralized leadership or distributed leadership. This paper explores the idea that centralized leadership, as earlier suggested, negatively impacts team performance. I applied the hypothesis to cricket, a sport in which leaders play an important role in team's success. I generated batting partnership network and evaluated the central-most player in the team, applying tools of social network analysis. Analyzing 3420 matches in one day international cricket and 1979 Test matches involving 10 teams, I examined the impact of centralized leadership in outcome of a contest. I observed that the odds for winning a one day international match under centralized leadership is 30% higher than the odds for winning under de-centralized leadership. In both forms of cricket (Test and one day international), I failed to find evidence that distributed leadership is associated with higher team performance. These results suggest important implications for cricket administrators in development and management of working teams.