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FAR Working Paper 2024/04 - 24: It Take Two to Make a Team Go Right

Today’s teams often have two formal leaders (i.e., dual leaders), yet research has almost exclusively examined the effects of a single, higher-level team leader’s behaviors on team members and team outcomes. This is problematic because these findings cannot unequivocally be applied to guide the use of dual-leader team structures. Using 93 professional service (i.e., audit) action teams, we examine effects of partner (i.e., external) and manager (i.e., internal) leaders simultaneously exhibiting initiating structure and individualized consideration leadership behaviors on team efficacy and, ultimately, team performance and team viability. Our findings show that the total capacity of leadership effects for a team with two leaders is only captured after considering the influence from both leaders simultaneously, especially when examining interactive effects between an individual leader’s behaviors and across two leaders’ behaviors. We find team efficacy is strengthened when the partner alone exhibits both higher structure and consideration, which is further augmented when the manager also exhibits higher consideration simultaneously. Thus, we find dual-leader interactions demonstrating the “Power of the Partner” and “Power of Consideration” effects are critical for building team efficacy, and in turn, team performance and team viability in dual-leader structures, revealing the existence of meaningful leadership interactions that cannot be found in single-leader studies.

Authors

Prof. dr. Murray R. Barrick

Professor Barrick’s research focuses on the impact individual differences in behavior and personality have on job performance and on methods of measuring and predicting such differences.  He also is a co-author of the Theory of Purposeful Work Behavior, which highlights the role of purposefulness and experienced meaningfulness arising within the person as a key to explaining person-situation interactions.  Further, Barrick studies executive team success, examining the role of the CEO, personality and leadership of TMT members, team composition, team interdependence, and team processes on individual, team, and firm performance.  Finally, he also has examined the influence candidate self-presentation tactics have on the interviewer during an employment interview.

Prof. dr. Olof Bik RA

Olof Bik is professor of Auditing & Assurance at the University of Groningen. In his research he takes a special interest in the study of culture, leadership, and behavior in the realm of the auditing and assurance profession, firms, and teams. Since its inception in 2015 until 2022, Bik was one of two managing directors and academic member of the Board of the Foundation for Auditing Research. He worked in the audit practice of PwC for 18 years, since 2002 always in combination with a university appointment (Groningen), and joined academia in full since 2012 (Nyenrode). 

Prof. dr. Jere R. Francis

Professor Jere Francis is ranked among the top ten academics to publish in leading scientific journals in the field of accountancy research. He won two awards from the American Accounting Association (AAA) for his substantial contribution to auditing research. He was also named Outstanding Audit Educator in 2013 by the AAA. Professor Francis served on the editorial boards of several leading scientific journals, including Abacus, Accounting Organizations & Society, Accounting & Finance, Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory, Contemporary Accounting Research, Journal of Accounting & Economics, Review of Accounting Studies, and The Accounting Review. In addition to being of scientific import, his research has been of practical significance to accountants and regulatory authorities and he has presented his research to leading international accountancy firms, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, the World Bank and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board in the United States. As FAR Research Chair, Professor Francis conducts scientific research on the quality of audits. He will also boost auditing education in the Netherlands with the help of several PhD students as part of this chair position.

Prof. Bradley Kirkman

Bradley L. Kirkman is the General (Ret.) H. Hugh Shelton Distinguished professor of leadership in the Department of Management, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship in the Poole College of Management at North Carolina State University. He received his Ph.D. in organizational behavior from the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research focuses on leadership, international management, virtual teams, and work team leadership and empowerment. He was formerly the Foreman R. and Ruby Bennett Endowed Chair in Business Administration in the Mays Business School at Texas A&M University. He has also worked in the Scheller College of Management at The Georgia Institute of Technology and the Bryan School of Business and Economics at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. He has held visiting professor positions in the Department of Management and Organizations at the University of Western Australia in 2006 and the Guanghua School of Management at Peking University in 2012. He was the chief operating officer (from 2016 to 2021) and is currently the program chair of the Organizational Behavior Division in the Academy of Management.

Dr. Lena Pieper

Lena Pieper is Assistant Professor at Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She joined Gies after completing a PhD from Maastricht University’s School of Business and Economics in the Netherlands. Lena spent time at Gies as a visiting PhD student in Spring 2022, and she brings research experience in auditing and leadership.

Prof. dr. Ann Vanstraelen

Ann Vanstraelen is Full Professor of Accounting and Assurance Services at Maastricht University and serves as Head of the department of Accounting and Information Management. She coordinates the multidisciplinary research theme "Culture, Ethics and Leadership". She earned her PhD at the University of Antwerp. Her research interests relate to the broad field of auditing and assurance services, governance, corporate reporting and disclosure, with a specific focus on the quality of accounting and auditing practices. 

 


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