Unraveling the Definitions of Distributed Leadership: An Insight from the Industrial Sector through a Systematic Literature Review

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6463-817-2_87How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Distributed Leadership; HRM; Leadership; Organizational; Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

The shift in perspective that leadership cannot be performed by a single leader alone, but involves the active role of organizational members, makes Distributed Leadership (DL) an interesting leadership concept to understand more deeply today. However, research on distributed leadership is dominated by studies in the educational context, and there is no consensus on the definition of DL used. This study aims to understand the characteristics of studies and explore the definitions used in Distributed Leadership research using a Systematic Literature Review. The scientific articles in this SLR are 35 articles included in the Scopus database from 2018 to 2024. The review results revealed that the definition of DL is used based on the level of unit analysis. At the organizational level, the definition and concept used is Distributed Leadership, while at the individual level, the concept and definition used is Distributed Leadership Agency. Based on the analysis, the majority of DL studies included were published in 2020 and 2021 using quantitative methods. Conducted mostly in China, the research context is mostly in the Healthcare industry, and analysis was done at the organizational level. This research contributes by providing a definition of Distributed Leadership based on a summary of various definitions and characteristics of DL according to previous researchers. In addition, from the analysis of study characteristics in this research, it can be identified that there are research gaps that still need to be explored in future research in the context of non-education industries.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Tonggo Marbun
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/09/12
TI  - Unraveling the Definitions of Distributed Leadership: An Insight from the Industrial Sector through a Systematic Literature Review
BT  - Proceedings of the 9th Global Conference on Business, Management and Entrepreneurship (GCBME 2024)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 743
EP  - 749
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-817-2_87
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6463-817-2_87
ID  - Marbun2025
ER  -