# The Impact of Heterogeneous Shared Leadership in Scientific Teams

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.15804 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.15804/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 27 Jun 2023.

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [The Effect of Gender Diversity on Scientific Team Impact: A Team Roles Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.23429/) (2025)
- [Smaller, Younger, and More Impactful: How AI-Assisted Writing Transforms Research Teams](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.27404/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Leadership is evolving dynamically from an individual endeavor to shared efforts. This paper aims to advance our understanding of shared leadership in scientific teams. We define three kinds of leaders, junior (10-15), mid (15-20), and senior (20+) based on career age. By considering the combinations of any two leaders, we distinguish shared leadership as heterogeneous when leaders are in different age cohorts and homogeneous when leaders are in the same age cohort. Drawing on 1,845,351 CS, 254,039 Sociology, and 193,338 Business teams with two leaders in the OpenAlex dataset, we identify that heterogeneous shared leadership brings higher citation impact for teams than homogeneous shared leadership. Specifically, when junior leaders are paired with senior leaders, it significantly increases team citation ranking by 1-2%, in comparison with two leaders of similar age. We explore the patterns between homogeneous leaders and heterogeneous leaders from team scale, expertise composition, and knowledge recency perspectives. Compared with homogeneous leaders, heterogeneous leaders are more adaptive in large teams, have more diverse expertise, and trace both the newest and oldest references.