| Leadership has crucial impact on the effectiveness of scientific research groups at universities. With distributed leadership as an analytical framework, this research demonstrates the unique leadership practices in three scientific research groups at Chinese universities, and inquires about the conditions to distribute leadership within the groups as well as the problems it might have. Key findings are summarized as follows: firstly, "boundary crossing" (subjects-crossing, paradigms-crossing, generations-crossing) & innovations triggered by knowledge creation provide the intrinsic motivation for distributing leadership within the scientific research groups; secondly, in scientific research groups at Chinese universities, leadership is distributed mainly in three areas, namely common goal building, responsibility & performance monitoring, and resource supporting & distribution; thirdly, leadership is distributed well in all the three areas for the highly effective group, but not that good for other two groups; fourthly, in general, the conflicts between university logic and market logic, together with the cultural differences between Chinese & western management, shape the unique context where distributed leadership is practiced in research groups at Chinese universities. |
