Distributed leadership, knowledge and information management and team performance in Chinese and Western groups

Purpose – More studies are beginning to support the role of distributed, as opposed to solo, leadership in team performance, but distributed leadership (DL) has not always been linked to higher performance. It may need to be co‐ordinated, rather than misaligned or fragmented, and may be most effective in teams performing interdependent tasks. DL has not often been linked to team information processing, however; viewing leadership as involving information management, it is proposed that DL may be linked to higher levels of information exchange and information integration, of both shared and unshared information. A series of research propositions are then developed with the purpose of exploring further the role of DL in team decision making, especially in terms of information exchange and information integration processes in Chinese and Western groups. Design/methodology/approach – The paper derives a number of research propositions from the literature on DL and information processing and applies them to decision making by Chinese and Western teams. Findings – The paper presents a series of propositions on the factors affecting the effectiveness of DL and possible differences between Chinese and Western teams. Originality/value – The paper presents a series of propositions about DL and relates the literature on DL to the literature on information processing in an original way.