Teams in the workplace

This study rejects the hierarchical perspective of traditional leadership approaches in public administration. The hierarchical perspective tends to treat public managers at the top as leaders, public employees at the bottom as followers, and leadership as management. This study proposes shared leadership as an alternative to traditional leadership approaches. In theory, shared leadership is not about a hierarchical position but about a mutually shared process that occurs throughout public organizations. The literature has made assertions that shared leadership emerges from horizontal organizations, adaptable cultures, and turbulent environments. However, little research has been conducted to test the effects of these organizational dimension variables on shared leadership in either the public or private sector. This study is a first step to examine the multiple relationships among organizational structure, culture, and context and shared leadership. It is also a first attempt to measure the concept of shared leadership. This study presents case-based empirical research. The study collects data from public employees across the bottom and the top of Broward County government in Florida because the study asserts that every public employee, regardless of hierarchical position, can be a public leader and display leadership. The data was collected using a mail survey of 261 public employees in the county government. Multiple regression analysis was conducted to test the conceptual model developed in this study. The model consists of five hypothesized positive relationships (hierarchy of position, functional specialization, supportive culture, technology, and organizational crisis), five hypothesized negative relationships (hierarchy of authority, centralization, bureaucratic and innovative cultures, and organizational size), and one positive or negative control variable (gender) with shared leadership. The results show that organizational crisis, technology, innovative culture, and hierarchy of position variables are significantly and positively associated with shared leadership. Public employees' perceptions of shared leadership are partially explainable from organizational structure, culture, and context factors. Indicating that shared leadership occurs in the perceptions of street-level public employees, this study implies that the horizontal and hierarchical perspectives on leadership coexist in bureaucratic organizations. This study concludes that every public employee displays leadership and is a public leader.

The demand for virtual education is rapidly increasing due to the proliferation of legislation demanding class size limitations, funding cuts, and school choice across the United States. Virtual education leaders are discovering new ways to enhance and develop teachers to become more efficient and increase quality of learning online. Learning teams are one tool implemented by professional development departments in order to obtain a community of shared best practices and increase professional learning for teachers. ... The purpose of this exploratory case study was to investigate teachers' perceptions of the contribution of virtual learning teams to their professional development in a completely online K-12 environment. ... Five major themes emerged from the interviews, which were teacher professional development as it relates to student success, collaboration, balance, knowledge gained from being part of a virtual learning team, and teachers' perception of student success.