The Role of Shared Leadership and Communication in Promoting Strategic Consensus and Performance

ABSTRACT The current study aims to investigate the effect of strategic consensus among managers on organizational performance, with an emphasis on shared leadership and communications in Iranian knowledge-intensive firms. Since Iran has its unique cultural characteristics with favoring a more authoritarian attribute, and leadership in knowledge-intensive firms has a more shared style, the context of the study is more appealing to such relationships. Data were collected from 115 randomly selected knowledge-intensive firms and analyzed using structural equation modeling by LISREL. Findings show that shared leadership positively influences strategic consensus of the management team, but it does not have a direct effect on performance. Also, communication among managers increases their strategic consensus which in turn positively affects firm performance. The findings act as a guideline for managers and suggest them to broaden the scope and the content of consensus and also for more effective decision-making and improved performance.