Research Article
BibTex RIS Cite

Horizontal leadership: Strengthening leadership through collaboration and flexibility

Year 2025, , 20 - 32, 02.05.2025

Zişan Duygu Alioğulları

https://doi.org/10.52848/ijls.1645909

Abstract

The issue of empowerment of workers has gained importance in today's business environment. The leader should take on the responsibility of both making decisions and guiding the team in making decisions. Horizontal leadership encourages cooperation, flexibility, and shared decision-making, in contrast to traditional leadership management. Horizontal leadership is the process of delegating authority to employees so that they can take on leadership roles by including them in decision-making processes. Horizontal leadership distributes power and authority throughout the organization, allowing employees to present their ideas and take initiative at every level. Therefore, horizontal leadership is an effective and new approach for achieving organizational success.
A comprehensive literature review, a comprehensive literature review was conducted on the subject of horizontal leadership. First, an overall summary of horizontal leadership was given, along with a detailed discussion about the way it differs from other forms of leadership. Next, in addition to the sub-dimensions of horizontal leadership, the fundamental characteristics that horizontal leaders need to possess were examined. In addition, research results examining the individual and organizational effects of horizontal leadership are included. In the conclusion section, information on horizontal leadership is gathered and offering recommendations for managers and senior management on how to successfully apply it in businesses. The study addresses an absence in the literature as there hasn't been any research on horizontal leadership to date.
A comprehensive literature review, a comprehensive literature review was conducted on the subject of horizontal leadership. First, an overall summary of horizontal leadership was given, along with a detailed discussion about the way it differs from other forms of leadership. Next, in addition to the sub-dimensions of horizontal leadership, the fundamental characteristics that horizontal leaders need to possess were examined. In addition, research results examining the individual and organizational effects of horizontal leadership are included. In the conclusion section, information on horizontal leadership is gathered and offering recommendations for managers and senior management on how to successfully apply it in businesses. The study addresses an absence in the literature as there hasn't been any research on horizontal leadership to date

Keywords

Horizontal leadership Leadership Shared leadership.

References

  • Alonderienė, R., Müller, R., Pilkienė, M., Šimkonis, S., & Chmieliauskas, A. (2020). Transitions in balanced leadership in projects: The case of horizontal leaders. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, 69(6), 3339-3351.
  • Bekman, A. (2023). The story of horizontal leadership. Cichorei, Amsterdam.
  • Drouin, N., Müller, R., Sankaran, S., & Vaagaasar, A. L. (2018). Balancing vertical and horizontal leadership in projects: Empirical studies from Australia, Canada, Norway and Sweden. International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, 11(4), 986-1006.
  • Dubinsky, Y., & Hazzan, O. (2010, May). Ad-hoc leadership in agile software development environments. In Proceedings of the 2010 ICSE Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering (pp. 32-38).
  • Ensley, M. D., Pearce, C. L., & Hmieleski, K. M. (2006). The moderating effect of environmental dynamism on the relationship between entrepreneur leadership behavior and new venture performance. Journal of Business Venturing, 21(2), 243-263.
  • Eriksen, E. O. (2001). Leadership in a communicative perspective. Acta Sociologica, 44(1), 21-35. Ergeneli, A. (2006). Örgüt ve insan. Hacettepe Üniversitesi Yayınları, Ankara.
  • Frankfort, L. (2016). Transitioning from vertical to horizontal leadership: The psychodynamics of middle managers’ shift of posture. Published Master Thesis. https://flora.insead.edu/fichiersti_wp/InseadEMCCCtheseswave19/84299.pdf
  • George, B. (2007). True north: Discover your authentic leadership. John Wiley & Sons. San Francisco. CA: Cosey Bass.
  • Gilley, A., Dixon, P., & Gilley, J. W. (2008). Characteristics of leadership effectiveness: Implementing change and driving innovation in organizations. Human resource development quarterly, 19(2), 153-169.
  • Göktaş, E., & Kaya, M. (2023). Paylaşılan liderlik ve okul çıktıları arasındaki ilişkiler: Bir meta-analiz çalışması. Yükseköğretim ve Bilim Dergisi, 13(3), 309-324.
  • Hanna, A. A., Smith, T. A., Kirkman, B. L., & Griffin, R. W. (2021). The emergence of emergent leadership: A comprehensive framework and directions for future research. Journal of Management, 47(1), 76-104.
  • Jerab, D., & Mabrouk, T. (2023). The role of leadership in changing organizational culture. Available at SSRN 4574324.
  • Kakar, A. K. (2017). Investigating the prevalence and performance correlates of vertical versus shared leadership in emergent software development teams. Information Systems Management, 34(2), 172-184.
  • Kaul, V., Shah, V. H., & El-Serag, H. (2020). Leadership during crisis: lessons and applications from the COVID-19 pandemic. Gastroenterology, 159(3), 809-812.
  • Kaur, G. (2013). Sustainable development in agriculture and green farming in India. OIDA International Journal of Sustainable Development, 6(12), 61-64.
  • Kaur, K. (2016). Distributed leadership and the leader: designing a professional development course for private school principals of Calcutta, India (Doctoral dissertation, Electronic version published by Vancouver Island University).
  • Lauritzen, H. H., Grøn, C. H., & Kjeldsen, A. M. (2021). Leadership matters, but so do co-jobbers: A research of the relative importance of transformational educational leadership and team connections for staff member’s outcomes and user sense of fulfillment. Review of Public Personnel Administration, 42, 614-640.
  • Locke, E. A. (1999). The essence of leadership: The four keys to leading successfully. Lexington Books.
  • Müller, R., Drouin, N., & Sankaran, S. (2021). Horizontal leadership and its scenarios. (Edit: Müller, R., Drouin, N., & Sankaran, S.). In: Balanced leadership: Making the best use of personal and team leadership in projects (ss. 9- 24). England: Oxford University Press.
  • Müller, R., Sankaran, S., Drouin, N., Vaagaasar, A. L., Bekker, M. C., & Jain, K. (2018). A theory framework for balancing vertical and horizontal leadership in projects. International Journal of Project Management, 36(1), 83-94.
  • Nuranita, R. (2019). Kepemimpinan horizontal sebagai seni kepemimpinan untuk semua orang dalam penerapanya di organisasi. Tatar Pasundan: Jurnal Diklat Keagamaan, 13(1), 71-83.
  • Pearce, C. L., & Sims Jr, H. P. (2002). Vertical versus shared leadership as predictors of the effectiveness of change management teams: An examination of aversive, directive, transactional, transformational, and empowering leader behaviors. Group dynamics: Theory, research, and practice, 6(2), 172.
  • Peavoy, D. (2018). An exploratory study to comprehend balanced project leadership and how temporary (horizontal) leaders are identified (Doctoral dissertation, Dublin, National College of Ireland).
  • Pilkienė, M., Alonderienė, R., Chmieliauskas, A., Šimkonis, S., & Müller, R. (2018). The governance of horizontal leadership in projects. International Journal of Project Management, 36(7), 913-924.
  • Pretorius, S., Steyn, H., & Bond-Barnard, T. J. (2017). Exploring project-related factors that influence leadership styles and their effect on project performance: A conceptual framework. South African Journal of Industrial Engineering, 28(4), 95-108.
  • Robertson, B. J. (2007). Organization at the leading edge: Introducing holacracy. Integral Leadership Review, 7(3), 1-33. Szczepańska-Woszczyna, K. (2015). Leadership and organizational culture as the normative influence of top management on employee's behaviour in the innovation process. Procedia Economics and Finance, 34, 396-402.
  • Singh, A., Sharma, S., Sengupta, S., & Goel, K. (2023). Sailing through the pandemic: role of authentic leadership and horizontal collectivism in unlocking work engagement in Indian startups. Journal of Asia Business Studies, 18(5), 1175-1195.
  • Sun, M., He, K., & Wen, T. (2023). The impact of shared leadership on team creativity in innovation teams-a chain mediating effect model. Sustainability, 15(2), 1212.
  • Tabassum, M., Raziq, M. M., & Sarwar, N. (2023). Toward an overarching multi-level conceptualization of emergent leadership: Perspectives from social identity, and implicit leadership theories. Human Resource Management Review, 33(2), 100951.
  • Terzi, E., & Boylu, Y. (2019). Türkiye ve Dünya’da tersine mentorluk: Kuşaklar bazında farklılaşan iş değerleri ve gençlerin işten ayrılma niyeti açısından bir inceleme. İşletme Araştırmaları Dergisi, 11(4), 3283-3322.
  • Toufighi, S. P., Sahebi, I. G., Govindan, K., Lin, M. Z. N., Vang, J., & Brambini, A. (2024). Participative leadership, cultural factors, and speaking-up behaviour: An examination of intra-organisational knowledge sharing. Journal of Innovation & Knowledge, 9(3), 100548.
  • Yin, K., Niu, J., Dong, N., Zhang, K., & Ashok, M. (2024). A meta-analysis of horizontal leadership and knowledge sharing. Current Psychology, 43(17), 15507-15521.
  • Yu, M., Vaagaasar, A. L., Müller, R., Wang, L., & Zhu, F. (2018). Empowerment: The key to horizontal leadership in projects. International Journal of Project Management, 36(7), 992-1006.
  • Zander, L., & Butler, C. L. (2010). Leadership modes: Success strategies for multicultural teams. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 26(3), 258-267.
  • Zhu, F., Wang, L., Sun, M., Sun, X., & Müller, R. (2019). Influencing factors of horizontal leaders' role identity in projects: A sequential mixed method approach. International Journal of Project Management, 37(4), 582-598.

Yatay liderlik: Liderliği iş birliği ve esneklikle güçlendirmek

Year 2025, , 20 - 32, 02.05.2025

Zişan Duygu Alioğulları

https://doi.org/10.52848/ijls.1645909

Abstract

Günümüz iş ortamında çalışanların yetkilendirilmesi ve güçlendirilmesi konuları önemli hale gelmiştir. Lider, yalnızca karar alıcı rolünü değil, aynı zamanda karar almayı ekip üyeleriyle birlikte yönlendirme rolünü de üstlenmelidir. Geleneksel liderlik yönetiminden farklı olarak yatay liderlik, iş birliğini, esnekliği ve paylaşımcı karar almayı teşvik etmektedir. Yatay liderlik, çalışanları karar alma süreçlerine dahil ederek liderlik rolleri üstlenmeleri için onları yetki devretme sürecidir. Yatay liderlik, gücü ve yetkiyi organizasyon geneline dağıtarak çalışanların her seviyede fikirlerini sunmalarını ve inisiyatif almalarını sağlamaktadır. Bu yüzden yatay liderlik, örgütlerde başarıya ulaşmak için etkili ve yeni bir yaklaşımdır.
Günümüz iş ortamında çalışanların yetkilendirilmesi ve güçlendirilmesi konuları önemli hale gelmiştir. Lider, yalnızca karar alıcı rolünü değil, aynı zamanda karar almayı ekip üyeleriyle birlikte yönlendirme rolünü de üstlenmelidir. Geleneksel liderlik yönetiminden farklı olarak yatay liderlik, iş birliğini, esnekliği ve paylaşımcı karar almayı teşvik etmektedir. Yatay liderlik, çalışanları karar alma süreçlerine dahil ederek liderlik rolleri üstlenmeleri için onları yetki devretme sürecidir. Yatay liderlik, gücü ve yetkiyi organizasyon geneline dağıtarak çalışanların her seviyede fikirlerini sunmalarını ve inisiyatif almalarını sağlamaktadır. Bu yüzden yatay liderlik, örgütlerde başarıya ulaşmak için etkili ve yeni bir yaklaşımdır.
Çalışma kapsamında, yatay liderlik kavramı üzerine kapsamlı bir literatür taraması gerçekleştirilmiştir. Öncelikle, yatay liderliğe dair temel bilgiler sunulmuş ve diğer liderlik türleriyle olan farkları ayrıntılı bir şekilde ele alınmıştır. Daha sonra, yatay liderlerin sahip olması gereken temel nitelikler ve yatay liderliğin alt boyutları da incelenmiştir. Ayrıca yatay liderliğin, bireysel ve örgütsel etkilerini inceleyen araştırma sonuçlarına yer verilmiştir. Sonuç bölümünde, yatay liderlik ile ilgili bilgiler derlenerek örgütlerde başarılı bir şekilde uygulanabilmesi için yöneticilere ve üst yönetime öneriler sunulmuştur. Yatay liderlik ile ilgili şu ana kadar yapılmış herhangi bir çalışmaya rastlanılmamış olup çalışma alandaki bir boşluğu doldurmaktadır.

Keywords

Yatay liderlik Liderlik Paylaşılmış Liderlik.

References

  • Alonderienė, R., Müller, R., Pilkienė, M., Šimkonis, S., & Chmieliauskas, A. (2020). Transitions in balanced leadership in projects: The case of horizontal leaders. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, 69(6), 3339-3351.
  • Bekman, A. (2023). The story of horizontal leadership. Cichorei, Amsterdam.
  • Drouin, N., Müller, R., Sankaran, S., & Vaagaasar, A. L. (2018). Balancing vertical and horizontal leadership in projects: Empirical studies from Australia, Canada, Norway and Sweden. International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, 11(4), 986-1006.
  • Dubinsky, Y., & Hazzan, O. (2010, May). Ad-hoc leadership in agile software development environments. In Proceedings of the 2010 ICSE Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering (pp. 32-38).
  • Ensley, M. D., Pearce, C. L., & Hmieleski, K. M. (2006). The moderating effect of environmental dynamism on the relationship between entrepreneur leadership behavior and new venture performance. Journal of Business Venturing, 21(2), 243-263.
  • Eriksen, E. O. (2001). Leadership in a communicative perspective. Acta Sociologica, 44(1), 21-35. Ergeneli, A. (2006). Örgüt ve insan. Hacettepe Üniversitesi Yayınları, Ankara.
  • Frankfort, L. (2016). Transitioning from vertical to horizontal leadership: The psychodynamics of middle managers’ shift of posture. Published Master Thesis. https://flora.insead.edu/fichiersti_wp/InseadEMCCCtheseswave19/84299.pdf
  • George, B. (2007). True north: Discover your authentic leadership. John Wiley & Sons. San Francisco. CA: Cosey Bass.
  • Gilley, A., Dixon, P., & Gilley, J. W. (2008). Characteristics of leadership effectiveness: Implementing change and driving innovation in organizations. Human resource development quarterly, 19(2), 153-169.
  • Göktaş, E., & Kaya, M. (2023). Paylaşılan liderlik ve okul çıktıları arasındaki ilişkiler: Bir meta-analiz çalışması. Yükseköğretim ve Bilim Dergisi, 13(3), 309-324.
  • Hanna, A. A., Smith, T. A., Kirkman, B. L., & Griffin, R. W. (2021). The emergence of emergent leadership: A comprehensive framework and directions for future research. Journal of Management, 47(1), 76-104.
  • Jerab, D., & Mabrouk, T. (2023). The role of leadership in changing organizational culture. Available at SSRN 4574324.
  • Kakar, A. K. (2017). Investigating the prevalence and performance correlates of vertical versus shared leadership in emergent software development teams. Information Systems Management, 34(2), 172-184.
  • Kaul, V., Shah, V. H., & El-Serag, H. (2020). Leadership during crisis: lessons and applications from the COVID-19 pandemic. Gastroenterology, 159(3), 809-812.
  • Kaur, G. (2013). Sustainable development in agriculture and green farming in India. OIDA International Journal of Sustainable Development, 6(12), 61-64.
  • Kaur, K. (2016). Distributed leadership and the leader: designing a professional development course for private school principals of Calcutta, India (Doctoral dissertation, Electronic version published by Vancouver Island University).
  • Lauritzen, H. H., Grøn, C. H., & Kjeldsen, A. M. (2021). Leadership matters, but so do co-jobbers: A research of the relative importance of transformational educational leadership and team connections for staff member’s outcomes and user sense of fulfillment. Review of Public Personnel Administration, 42, 614-640.
  • Locke, E. A. (1999). The essence of leadership: The four keys to leading successfully. Lexington Books.
  • Müller, R., Drouin, N., & Sankaran, S. (2021). Horizontal leadership and its scenarios. (Edit: Müller, R., Drouin, N., & Sankaran, S.). In: Balanced leadership: Making the best use of personal and team leadership in projects (ss. 9- 24). England: Oxford University Press.
  • Müller, R., Sankaran, S., Drouin, N., Vaagaasar, A. L., Bekker, M. C., & Jain, K. (2018). A theory framework for balancing vertical and horizontal leadership in projects. International Journal of Project Management, 36(1), 83-94.
  • Nuranita, R. (2019). Kepemimpinan horizontal sebagai seni kepemimpinan untuk semua orang dalam penerapanya di organisasi. Tatar Pasundan: Jurnal Diklat Keagamaan, 13(1), 71-83.
  • Pearce, C. L., & Sims Jr, H. P. (2002). Vertical versus shared leadership as predictors of the effectiveness of change management teams: An examination of aversive, directive, transactional, transformational, and empowering leader behaviors. Group dynamics: Theory, research, and practice, 6(2), 172.
  • Peavoy, D. (2018). An exploratory study to comprehend balanced project leadership and how temporary (horizontal) leaders are identified (Doctoral dissertation, Dublin, National College of Ireland).
  • Pilkienė, M., Alonderienė, R., Chmieliauskas, A., Šimkonis, S., & Müller, R. (2018). The governance of horizontal leadership in projects. International Journal of Project Management, 36(7), 913-924.
  • Pretorius, S., Steyn, H., & Bond-Barnard, T. J. (2017). Exploring project-related factors that influence leadership styles and their effect on project performance: A conceptual framework. South African Journal of Industrial Engineering, 28(4), 95-108.
  • Robertson, B. J. (2007). Organization at the leading edge: Introducing holacracy. Integral Leadership Review, 7(3), 1-33. Szczepańska-Woszczyna, K. (2015). Leadership and organizational culture as the normative influence of top management on employee's behaviour in the innovation process. Procedia Economics and Finance, 34, 396-402.
  • Singh, A., Sharma, S., Sengupta, S., & Goel, K. (2023). Sailing through the pandemic: role of authentic leadership and horizontal collectivism in unlocking work engagement in Indian startups. Journal of Asia Business Studies, 18(5), 1175-1195.
  • Sun, M., He, K., & Wen, T. (2023). The impact of shared leadership on team creativity in innovation teams-a chain mediating effect model. Sustainability, 15(2), 1212.
  • Tabassum, M., Raziq, M. M., & Sarwar, N. (2023). Toward an overarching multi-level conceptualization of emergent leadership: Perspectives from social identity, and implicit leadership theories. Human Resource Management Review, 33(2), 100951.
  • Terzi, E., & Boylu, Y. (2019). Türkiye ve Dünya’da tersine mentorluk: Kuşaklar bazında farklılaşan iş değerleri ve gençlerin işten ayrılma niyeti açısından bir inceleme. İşletme Araştırmaları Dergisi, 11(4), 3283-3322.
  • Toufighi, S. P., Sahebi, I. G., Govindan, K., Lin, M. Z. N., Vang, J., & Brambini, A. (2024). Participative leadership, cultural factors, and speaking-up behaviour: An examination of intra-organisational knowledge sharing. Journal of Innovation & Knowledge, 9(3), 100548.
  • Yin, K., Niu, J., Dong, N., Zhang, K., & Ashok, M. (2024). A meta-analysis of horizontal leadership and knowledge sharing. Current Psychology, 43(17), 15507-15521.
  • Yu, M., Vaagaasar, A. L., Müller, R., Wang, L., & Zhu, F. (2018). Empowerment: The key to horizontal leadership in projects. International Journal of Project Management, 36(7), 992-1006.
  • Zander, L., & Butler, C. L. (2010). Leadership modes: Success strategies for multicultural teams. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 26(3), 258-267.
  • Zhu, F., Wang, L., Sun, M., Sun, X., & Müller, R. (2019). Influencing factors of horizontal leaders' role identity in projects: A sequential mixed method approach. International Journal of Project Management, 37(4), 582-598.
There are 35 citations in total.

Details

Primary Language Turkish
Subjects Strategy, Management and Organisational Behaviour (Other)
Journal Section Articles
Authors

Zişan Duygu Alioğulları 0000-0001-6602-0344

Publication Date May 2, 2025
Submission Date February 24, 2025
Acceptance Date April 22, 2025
Published in Issue Year 2025

Cite

APA Alioğulları, Z. D. (2025). Yatay liderlik: Liderliği iş birliği ve esneklikle güçlendirmek. Uluslararası Liderlik Çalışmaları Dergisi: Kuram Ve Uygulama, 8(1), 20-32. https://doi.org/10.52848/ijls.1645909