Linking shared leadership with pharmaceutical team sales performance in Pakistan: a dual mediation model

Purpose: The pharmaceutical retail industry faces leadership challenges, emphasizing the importance of a mechanism to support sales managers. This paper aims to demonstrate how shared leadership (SL) might improve team performance (TP), with knowledge sharing (KS) and psychological safety (PS) serving as dual mediation effects. Design/methodology/approach: The authors used social learning theory (SLT) to support their hypotheses. Using a purposive sampling technique, 440 respondents (65 leaders and 375 team members) from 65 pharmaceutical sales teams in Pakistan were obtained through data collection from dyad sources. The authors also used partial least square-structured equation modeling (PLS-SEM) using SmartPLS 3.3.9 to assess the measurement model and the direct paths testing. The authors also used PROCESS macro version 4 to examine dual mediation effects. Findings: The results revealed that SL does not directly impact TP; rather, it depends on the dual mediating mechanisms of KS and PS. Originality/value: This is an initial attempt to establish a conceptual model based on SLT, with KS and PS acting as dual mediation mechanisms. This research contributes to the current knowledge of team leadership by concentrating on how SL approaches might promote TP in the pharmaceutical sector.