ABSTRACT
There is a growing literature on coordination and leadership in teams, often with a special focus on teams in high-risk environments. Two concepts that have received much attention in this research arc adaptive coordination and shared leadership. Adaptive coordination refers to shifts between different coordination mechanisms, such as explicit versus implicit coordination or mutual adjustment versus vertical leadership, in line with situational and task demands. Shared leadership is defined as distribution of leadership tasks across different team members, matching situational demands and individual resources and competencies. When leadership is understood as any attempt by any member of the team to influence others in order to achieve certain goals, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish team leadership from team coordination. This creates conceptual confusion, but also practical concems as it becomes less clear what behaviors by whom are required. In order to guide future research and practical efforts, we propose a conceptual framework based Oll three constructs stemming from organization theory, namely task interdependence, coordination mechanisms, and substitutes for leadership. \Ve suggest some
relationships between different types of team coordination and leadership with team perfornlance based on this framework and give some examples from research especially concerning high-risk teams in support of the proposed relationships.
