The topology of collective leadership

Over the past decade, there has been a surge of both theoretical and empirical research to explore the possibilities of shared leadership, a reorientation of leadership away from understanding the actions and interactions of "leaders" to understanding the emergent, informal, and dynamic "leadership" brought about by the members of the collective itself. Naturally, this focus on topology (or structural patterning) has prompted researchers to leverage the advancements in network analytic methodology to understand this paradigm of leadership. Despite the recognition of the unique advantage of studying collective leadership using network analysis, there has been a translational gap. The current paper aims to fill this gap, bridging the core ideas that epitomize collective leadership to the social network metrics and analytics needed to fully understand its antecedents and consequences. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.