In prevailing leadership
research, leaders are brought to the fore; they remain predominantly subjected
to master the performance of their organization (Abreu Pederzini, 2018). Recently,
pluralistic approaches (Denis et al., 2012) have called for shared
responsibilities and raised awareness of the role of followers (Collinson,
2006). However, in contemporary organizations, the hierarchical roles of
leaders and followers often conceal another. Namely colleagueship, the
phenomenon of leadership among colleagues, who might hold relatively equal
positions in an organizational hierarchy, remains underexplored in organization
studies.

Colleagueship is undoubtedly
critical to organizational performance. Contemporary organizations are
increasingly dependent on competent and committed human resources (Becker et
al., 1997; Hatch & Dyer, 2004). In turbulent environments (Brown &
Eisenhardt, 1997), daily cooperation and peer support between colleagues comes
into focus. However, extant research appears not to explicitly focus on the
role of colleagues. Thus, our study diverges from leader-driven approaches and
emphasizes the meaningfulness of each colleague at work. The main research
question guiding our study is: How is colleagueship manifested in contemporary
work? We propose that each organizational member (by
taking a role of an active colleague) significantly contributes to the
collaboration at the workplace. In this paper we study colleagueship as it
appears in everyday/daily work. Our aim is to study how colleagueship is
constructed in different organizational contexts.

In
light of the lack of current explicit research on colleagueship, we adopted a
qualitative research design using a multiple case study approach (Yin, 2004). Empirical
data for the study has been collected in four case organizations representing
diverse fields. Our data consists of 59 theme interviews (26 interviews in case
A, 12 in case B, 17 in case C and 4 in case A) and field observations. The interviews
were conducted at the premises of the case organizations, which allowed
simultaneous observations to be made. In addition, we observed the daily work
at the units by participating meetings and other work-related gatherings. The
interviews were unstructured. We interviewed employees and managers
representing various organizational levels (CEOs, middle managers, line-managers,
unit managers etc.). The aim was to talk about the collaboration and
interaction as the elements of everyday work. The interviews lasted from 30 to
90 minutes. They were recorded and then transcribed verbatim. Data was first
analysed per case, followed by a cross-case analysis (Eisenhardt, 1989). This
led us to develop an over-arching data structure (Gioia et al., 2012)
representing the main findings from the study.

Our findings enable
developing a model of colleagueship. This model is develop in the full paper
for NFF. The main contribution of our paper is in recognizing an opportunity to
re-introduce the concept of colleagueship into management and organization
research. We extend research by highlighting and conceptualizing the notion of colleagueship.
In so doing, we bring attention to and emphasize the significance of each
organizational member. While we use the concept of colleagueship, we refer to a
continuous co-construction process in which acts of colleagueship in everyday
actions have a locally supported influence on the collegial social order (see
Hosking, 1988). In fact, our notion of colleagueship is comparable with certain
aspects of shared leadership. Paralleling developments in leadership research,
our focus is not directed at individual leaders and their excellence. Instead,
we acknowledge that power is distributed throughout an organization among all
of its members.