ABSTRACT
Distributed leadership pattern has been a topic of growing interest in recent years, recognizing that much remains to be known about this phenomenon. The research on distributed leadership acknowledges that responsibility and power are not exclusively limited to one formal leader, but are distributed between formal and informal leaders. The decision-making behavior of team members plays a vital role in optimizing cooperation and team performance. Nevertheless, little attention is paid to investigating the underlying mechanisms about how people in a team cooperate to initiate effective interactions and enhance team performance. Game theory offers a comprehensive analysis of rational behavior under the circumstances of strategic interdependence. By organizing the formal leader, the informal leader, and the ordinary employee in a team, this study constructs a tripartite evolutionary game model and analyzes the internal mechanism of distributed leadership patterns. The study finds that the equilibrium of the three parties is affected by multiple factors. The simulation results reveal that the empowerment of the formal leader to the informal leader is indispensable to promoting optimal cooperation and team performance in distributed leadership patterns. These findings have theoretical implications for the distributed leadership literature and managerial implications for practitioners.
