Twentieth International Conference on Knowledge, Culture, and Change in Organizations

Abstract

Today, leadership is undergoing a dramatic change forced by disruptive technologies, digitalization and increasing complexity (Hazy & Uhl-Bien, 2013) with the issue that more often leadership takes place as distributed and shared without formal leaders (Ropo, 2019). People have to lead one another to achieve organizational goals (Pearce & Conger, 2003) and work in group activities through and within relationships (Bennett, Wise, Woods, & Harvey, 2003). The main issues hereby are, that more often today´s leaders are overwhelmed by the new demands of sharing power and authority with a reaction such as destructive behaviour, and burnout (Krauter, 2018a, 2018b; Rabenu, 2017). But, also today´s followers could be overtaxed by the new requirement to take over temporarily the leader role and making responsible decisions together with others (Bastardoz & Van Vugt, 2019). Facing recurrent decision and coordination problems, group members without formal leaders have to maintain simultaneously group cohesion by intentionally selecting social strategies to make the best decisions for all, such as in classical game situations (Smith, 1982; Van Vugt, 2006). Quantum game theory (Flitney & Abbott, 2002) offers the opportunity to find better cooperative strategies and get better payoffs than in classical game solutions (Eisert, Wilkens, & Lewenstein, 1999). This paper will provide insights in how a support system for groups in shared and distributed leadership context should look like to secure a high level of group cohesion, to guarantee effective leadership, to provide efficient common decision making and to reduce stress, destructive behavioral pattern, and overuse of power.