The Effect of Emotional Intelligence and Shared Leadership and the Mediation Effect of Team Cohesion and Team Trust: IMOI Model Approach

Glynnis Tan and Justin Antonio/ Dr. Kihwan Kim

Kean University

tangly@kean.edu

 Abstract

       Shared leadership is a social process shared by members aiming toward the completion of shared goals. The extant literature on shared leadership fails to explore its development systematically. This study investigates shared leadership development via the Input-Mediator-Output-Input model. Our hypothesis states emotional intelligence influences shared leadership and team cohesion and trust will mediate both emotional intelligence and shared leadership. 187 senior undergraduates participated in Capstone for 12 weeks. Longitudinal data were collected at three different times with path analysis to test the hypothesis. Data revealed that team members’ emotional intelligence influenced shared leadership behaviors via the development of team cohesion and trust.

Introduction

Shared Leadership is defined as an emergent team process by the distribution of leadership functions among multiple team members. Research Questions: 1.) Will emotional intelligence influence the development of shared leadership over time? 2.) Will team cohesion mediate the relationship between emotional intelligence and shared leadership over time? 3.) Will trust mediate the relationship between emotional intelligence and shared leadership over time?

Hypothesis Development

Emotional Intelligence:

an individual’s ability to understand and control one’s emotion and understand and motivate others' emotion

Trust:

an expectation or belief toward another person having good intentions to achieve better group performance and requires an interpersonal relationship as a prerequisite condition

Team Cohesion:

characterized as the level of attraction of team members to the team and the desire for members to want to stay in the team

Research Methodology and Experiment

Participants

University seniors with majors in several fields within Business (e.g. Finance, Accounting, Marketing, Management, Global Business) at a mid-sized, mid-Atlantic, U.S. University, competed in an online business simulation (“Capsim”) during their required capstone course.  Participants were assigned to each team to manage a start-up manufacturing technology company over an eight-year simulated period that pragmatically took place within one semester.

Individual survey results, aggregated for each team, measured behaviors that affect team cohesion such as team efficacy, satisfaction, and trust.  A total of 186 students on 47 teams were involved in this longitudinal study.  Of the participants, 50 percent were male and 50 percent female.  The average age of the participants was 24.6 years (s.d. = 5.6), and the average self-reported grade point average (GPA) was 2.91 (s.d. = 0.52).  Each team had four or five members, including at least one marketing, finance, management, and global business major student in order to provide skills to run various functions within the company.  Regarding ethnicity, students self-reported as White (46.8%), Hispanic (20.7%), African American (16.7%), Asian (11.1%), and others (4.8%).  Each team consisted of 4-5 students of diversity by ethnic background, age, gender, and academic major.  

Experiment 

Participants were assigned to teams to compete in a business simulation game as a requirement of their course.  Each team had four or five members and managed a small start-up company, each with exactly the same resources at the beginning of the competition.  For twelve rounds, representing 12 weeks, the teams completed decision-making in the area of R&D, Marketing, Production, and Finance. After each round, the simulation game produced various outcomes such as profit, stock price, market share, and debt ratio, which reflect team performances.  The simulation mimics the general processes of running a manufacturing corporation, whose key decisions should bring bigger profits to the company in a competitive environment. Thus, participants strived to make a bigger profit each round, beating its competitors. The teams’ performance was measured by the number of profits and the rankings based on the profit amounts. The result of the simulation accounted for 20% of students’ final grades.  During the experiment, we collected data at four different time points. The participants played the games for 12 rounds. Each round is equivalent to one week. We collected the data of emotional intelligence at the beginning of the game (T0), self–efficacy, and trust after week (T1), team cohesion after week 8 (T2), and the data on team performance after week 12.

Measures

Shared Leadership

We measured the participants’ perceptions of shared leadership using the scale developed by …… (       ). The scale has 10 items. The items were assessed on a five-point Likert scale, with “1” representing “strongly disagree” and “5” representing “strongly agree.”  The individual scores for each team were averaged to derive a final measure of the group level of shared leadership.

The values of ICC (1) and ICC (2) were 0.20 and 0.52 for team cohesion, F = 2.61, p< 0.01. The median rwg(j) value was 0.72. These outcomes justified the aggregation of individual scores of team cohesion to derive the team level score. 

Emotional intelligence.  We measured the participants’ perceptions of their own emotional intelligence using the scale developed by Law et al. (2004, α = 88; the current study α = .81).  The scale has 16 items and reflects four dimensions of emotional intelligence: Self-emotion appraisal, Others’ emotion appraisal, Use of emotion, and Regulation of emotion.  The items were assessed on a five-point Likert scale, with “1” representing “strongly disagree” and “5” representing “strongly agree.”  The individual scores for each team were averaged to derive a final measure of the group level of emotional intelligence. The individual scores for each team were averaged to derive a final measure of trust. The values of ICC (1) and ICC (2) were 0.19 and 0.64 for trust, F = 2.02, p<0.05. The median rwg(j) value was 0.72. These outcomes justified the aggregation of an individual score of team efficacy to derive the team-level score.

Trust.  The perception of trust in team members was measured by using an eleven items scale (McAllister, 1995). The reliability of this scale for the current study was 0.91, showing high reliability of the measure.  The participants responded to these six questions using a five-point Likert scale, with “1” representing “strongly disagree” and “5” representing “strongly agree”.  The individual scores for each team were averaged to derive a final measure of trust.

The individual scores for each team were averaged to derive a final measure of trust. The values of ICC (1) and ICC (2) were 0.19 and 0.64 for trust, F = 2.02, p<0.05. The median rwg(j) value was 0.72. These outcomes justified the aggregation of an individual score of team efficacy to derive the team level score.

Team Cohesion.  The perception of team cohesion was measured by the scale developed by Michalisin and his colleagues (2004, α = 0.84; the current study α = 0.81).  The scale has six items and measures the extent to which team members stick together and remain united in the pursuit of a common goal. The participants responded to these six questions using a five-point Likert scale, with “1” representing “strongly disagree” and “5” representing “strongly agree”.  The individual scores for each team were averaged to derive a final measure of team cohesion. The values of ICC (1) and ICC (2) were 0.20 and 0.52 for team cohesion, F = 2.61, p< 0.01. The median rwg(j) value was 0.72. These outcomes justified the aggregation of individual scores of team cohesion to derive the team-level score.

Team Satisfaction.  The seven items for individual satisfaction with the team were adapted to this study from Peeters et al. (2006).   The reliability score of the scale was 0.85, showing high reliability.  The items were assessed on a five-point scale, with “1” representing “strongly disagree” and “5” representing “strongly agree.”  The team score was aggregated by averaging individual scores for each team. The values of ICC (1) and ICC (2) were 0.12 and 0.69 for team satisfaction, F = 2.98, p< 0.01. The median rwg(j) value was 0.72. These outcomes justified the aggregation of individual scores of team cohesion to derive the team-level score. 

Team Performance.  We measured each team’s performance based on the amount of profit achieved at each round and the team’s cumulative profit at the end of the competition.  The simulation generated numerous financial outcomes including net profit, stock price, market share, turnover rate, debt ratio, etc.  Among these indicators, we selected net profit as a major indicator of team performance because we consider it a major measure that best represented the nature of running a business.  After each round (each week), the teams received documented feedback (e.g., simulation round report) about their performance and a partial class score based on each round’s outcome.  This competitive setting motivated students to actively engage in each round, making the research study closer to a real-world setting.  

Findings

• Emotional Intelligence directly promoted shared leadership. (H1 supported)
• EI indirectly promoted shared leadership via the development of trust and team cohesion. (H2 &3 supported)
• Share Leadership has a positive impact on team satisfaction and team cohesion (H4 supported)

Conclusion

    The current study investigated the development process of shared leadership by employing IMOI model process, revealing that team members’ emotional intelligence has influenced shared leadership behavior via the development of team cohesion and trust. The adoption of IMOI model enables to highlight the dynamic process of the shared leadership development process. Also, IMOI model enables to open new research opportunities by investigating more possible input variables and emergent states, the interactions between emergent states and shared leadership, and the reciprocal relationship between team performance and shared leadership. In this section, we will discuss practical implications, limitations, and future research issues.

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