Does shared leadership always work? A state-of-the-art review and future prospects

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to sort out the potential dark sides of shared leadership, so as to promote a more comprehensive and balanced views of the impact of shared leadership and provide directions for future research.Design/methodology/approachThrough extensive database and manual searches, 766 literature records were obtained. After three rounds of literature screening, 17 studies were retained. On this basis, the 17 studies were coded and analyzed.FindingsFrom the perspectives of individual motivation, hierarchical functionalism and leadership role configuration, the existing studies have explored the negative impacts of shared leadership on team members, formal team leaders and the overall work teams. Specifically, for team members, shared leadership may cause negative consequences like power struggle, role stress and knowledge hiding. For formal team leaders, shared leadership may cause negative consequences like psychological territorial loss, leadership motivation declines and the dualistic paradox of self and group. For the overall work teams, shared leadership may cause negative consequences like team performance inhibition, low decision-making efficiency, team responsibility dispersion and team creativity decline. Meanwhile, contextual factors play a key role in determining the effects of shared leadership.Originality/valueThrough a systematic review of the negative impact of shared leadership, this study responds to the research calls for exploring the dark sides of shared leadership, provides the academic community with a more comprehensive and balanced view of the impact of shared leadership, and identifies several directions for future research.