Abstract
The extending lockdown and social distancing due to the COVID-19 pandemic create an extreme context in which leaders must respond to threats of severe physical, psychological, or material consequences to organizational members. Building on affective events theory and the media richness literature, we develop a theoretical model explicating how virtual leadership in an extreme context can promote team creativity by reducing team anxiety elicited by extreme events, which in turn facilitating team information elaboration. Data from a three-stage longitudinal field experiment, in combination with an experience sampling method on 251 employees in 32 teams across 12 preschools in the extreme context of lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic provide strong support for the hypothesized sequential mediation effect between virtual leadership and team creativity. Our findings have significant theoretical and practical implications on virtual leadership and work team management.
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