The Bright and Dark Sides of Distributed Leadership in Schools: A Joint Structural and Functional Perspective on Distributed Leadership, Work Performance and Job Satisfaction

This study combines a structural and functional perspective on distributed leadership to disentangle its beneficial and detrimental effects on job satisfaction and work performance. Specifically, we explore the interaction between structural (SDL) and functional distributed leadership (FDL) on leadership support, organizational identification, and empowerment. This study also tests the mediating role of leadership support, organizational identification and empowerment as mechanisms that explain the association between distributed leadership and work-related outcomes in teachers. We used a multilevel mediation analysis to test the overall model in a sample of 2632 teachers embedded in 203 Romanian schools. The results replicate previous findings regarding the negative association between SDL and empowerment and identification and show that FDL has an overall positive association with leadership support, identification, and empowerment, as well as with job satisfaction and work performance reported by teachers. SDL had a negative indirect association with job satisfaction mediated by leadership support and with work performance mediated by organizational identification. The association between FDL and job satisfaction was significantly mediated by leadership support, identification, and empowerment within schools. Finally, the association between FDL and work performance was significantly mediated by organizational identification within as well as between schools.