Received: 30 November 2016 Revised: 14 April 2018 Accepted: 30 April 2018 DOI: 10.1002/job.2296 THE JOB ANNUAL REVIEW Shared leadership: A state‐of‐the‐art review and future research agenda Jinlong Zhu1* | Zhenyu Liao2* | Kai Chi Yam3 | Russell E. Johnson4 1 School of Business, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China Summary 2 Olin Business School, Washington University The traditional “great man” approaches to leadership emphasize qualities of individual in St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.A. leaders for leadership success. In contrast, a rapidly growing body of research has 3 Department of Management and started to examine shared leadership, which is broadly defined as an emergent team Organization, National University of Singapore, Singapore phenomenon whereby leadership roles and influence are distributed among team 4 Department of Management, Michigan State members. Despite the progress, however, the extant literature on shared leadership University, East Lansing, Michigan, U.S.A. has been fragmented with a variety of conceptualizations and operationalizations. Correspondence Jinlong Zhu, School of Business, Renmin This has resulted in little consensus regarding a suitable overarching theoretical University of China, No. 59 Zhongguancun framework and has undermined developing knowledge in this research domain. To Street, Beijing 100872, P.R. China. Email:
[email protected] redress these problems, we provide a comprehensive review of the growing literature Zhenyu Liao, Olin Business School, of shared leadership by (a) clarifying the definition of shared leadership; (b) conceptu- Washington University in St. Louis. One ally disentangling shared leadership from other theoretically overlapping constructs; Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO 63130, USA.