Leading innovation through employees’ participation: Plural leadership in employee-driven innovation practices

Plural leadership has gained a lot of attention, challenging traditional individualistic leadership models and moving the focus to the dynamic and collective nature of leadership. This leadership paradigm seems particularly relevant in situations where plurality is involved to cope with complexity and uncertainty: a valid example is the context of innovation. In this study, we explore how plural leadership works in the context of employee-driven innovation (EDI), since these initiatives can provide interesting insights about the interactions between formal and informal leaders. Our empirical analysis supports the idea that EDI involves plural leadership. We identified some similarities with two of the streams theorized by Denis, Langley and Sergi (2012) in “Leadership in the Plural”, namely “sharing leadership in teams” and “producing leadership through interaction.” Through multiple case studies, it was possible to extend those streams and to deepen our understanding of the relationship between formal and informal leaders. We conceptualized two leadership roles (i.e., process leadership and content leadership), which enable plural leadership to meet the competing demand of exploration and exploitation, and we revealed elements that help explain why and when leadership is shared between multiple individuals.