This page is a short scientific study supporting the Soft Transmission portal. It situates the proposed model within the sociology of organisations and the research literature on leadership succession and shared leadership. The one-page abstract below is also reproduced in the preamble of the agreement.

Abstract (one page). Non-profit and limited-profit organisations face a recurring governance problem: leadership concentrated in one person or a small team, followed by abrupt departure, resignation waves, and difficulty renewing the teams. The research literature studies several responses. Work on leadership succession and executive turnover documents the cost of unplanned departures and the value of planned handovers, including in the non-profit sector. Work on shared, distributed and collective leadership shows that leadership can be treated as a social process spread across a team rather than a role held by one individual, and reports that shared leadership can predict team and organisational outcomes at least as well as vertical leadership. Within this family, researchers distinguish several arrangements, including rotated (consecutive) leadership, specialisation by skill, simultaneous enactment, and centralisation. The soft transmission model proposed by WikiDeal draws on this state of the art: it does not aim at forced rotation, but at a documented, gradual handover (discover, steer, transmit) combined with stability where it is useful, and at a recognised pool of contributors. This study lists standard keywords and verifiable references so that the model can be discussed against the current state of the art rather than in isolation.

Scientific study: soft transmission and the sociology of organisations

Standard keywords (state of the art)

The following keywords are the common, standard terms used in the literature. They allow readers to locate the state of the art:

Leadership succession
Executive turnover
Founder transition / founder departure
Shared leadership
Distributed leadership
Collective leadership
Rotated (rotating) leadership
Sociology of organisations / organisation studies
Governance in non-profit organisations

What the literature documents

Succession and turnover

Research on leadership succession and executive turnover documents the disruption caused by unplanned departures, and the value of planned, accompanied handovers. This concern is well studied in the non-profit sector, where a departing leader takes knowledge, networks and experience with them, and where founder transitions are identified as critical moments requiring preparation.

Shared, distributed and collective leadership

A large body of work treats leadership not only as a role held by one person, but as a social process that can be spread across a team. Reviews report that this shared form can predict team and organisational outcomes at least as well as vertical, individual leadership.

Patterns of shared leadership, including rotation

Within shared leadership, researchers distinguish several arrangements. One recent longitudinal study identifies withdrawal, specialisation, rotation, simultaneous enactment, and centralisation as distinct patterns that emerge depending on context. Rotation, here, means a planned, consecutive handover of leadership among members, which is close to the soft transmission logic.

How this connects to the soft transmission model

The model proposed in the Soft Transmission portal starts from this state of the art. It does not treat rotation as an obligation. It aims at a gradual, documented handover in three stages (discover, steer, transmit), combined with stability where it is useful, and at building a recognised pool of contributors. The model can therefore be read as one applied variant within the broader shared-leadership and succession literature, adapted to organisations that manage assets and report to public and private institutions while wanting to stay participatory.

References

The following references are verifiable through their DOI or public repository. They are given as entry points, not as an exhaustive list.

Wassenaar, C. L., Pearce, C. L., and Lorinkova, N. (2025). Shared Leadership 2.0: Taking Stock and Looking Forward. Cambridge Elements in Leadership, Cambridge University Press. Open Access. doi:10.1017/9781009560467
Sweeney, A. (2024). "Sharing the Leadership Space: Toward a Contextual Understanding of Shared Leadership Patterns in Organizational Teams". Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 31(2). Open Access. doi:10.1177/15480518241246026
Kenny, D. A., and Hallmark, B. W. (1992). "Rotation designs in leadership research". The Leadership Quarterly, 3(1), 25-41. doi:10.1016/1048-9843(92)90004-Y
Pearce, C. L., Manz, C. C., and Sims, H. P. (2014). Framework distinguishing rotated, integrated, distributed and comprehensive shared leadership (as reviewed in Wassenaar, Pearce and Lorinkova 2025).
Masaoka, J. Exiting Nonprofit Leaders as Resources for Social Change. Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund. PDF
McIndoo, L. (2017). How Does Departure of a Founding Leader Impact Outcomes in a Local Community-Based Nonprofit? Doctoral dissertation, Walden University. Full text
Research in the Sociology of Organizations (RSO), Emerald Publishing, ISSN 0733-558X. Reference series for the sociology of organisations.

Encyclopaedic entries: Organizational studies, Shared leadership, Distributed leadership, Succession planning.

Status of this study

This page is a starting synthesis. It gathers standard keywords and verifiable references to show the current state of the art. It could be extended with further studies and with domain-specific evidence (for example, housing cooperatives).