Virtual Leadership Research Articles

Not All Telework is Valuable

Prior to COVID-19, telework was a key action adopted by companies to foster employee wellbeing, but the evidence of its effects was equivocal. This study aims to 1) develop and validate a questionnaire measuring the quality of telework (QoT-q) and 2) assess the impact of telework on employee work engagement and work-family balance in the case of high-quality telework (HqT), low-quality telework (LqT), and no telework (NoT). The sample consists of 260 workers from three Italian organizations. Through principal component analysis and Cronbach’s alpha values, the final QoT-q comprised three areas: 1) agile workplaces, 2) flexible worker, and 3) virtual leadership. ANOVAs showed that job resources, work engagement, and work-family balance are significantly higher among HqT, while job demands do not differ or were lower. The Job Demands-Resources model was useful to explain the effects of telework. Implications for future research and practice are presented.

Leading Intercultural Virtual Teams During the COVID-19 Pandemic – Research Results

Abstract Objective: The coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak has been officially classified as a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO), meaning the infection is progressing faster and faster in many countries simultaneously. The United States of America has announced a travel ban on 28 European countries, many countries have closed universities, schools and kindergartens, and large gatherings of people have been forbidden. Many companies including Google, Apple and Microsoft encourage or mandate employees to adopt a work-from-home policy. For companies in the modern technology industry, the infrastructure and policy necessary for remote working are undoubtedly already implemented. However, for many smaller companies and organizations the situation was very different. Remote working and virtual team management did not occur or were limited to only a few people. The aim of the article is to present the problems of leading virtual intercultural teams, with particular emphasis on the situation of the COVID-19 pandemic. Methodology: Contemporary texts in the domain of cross-cultural leadership have been reviewed. Relevant existing research has been reviewed and primary research conducted. The latter consisted of 24 IDIs (Individual In-depth Interviews) with employees from various Polish organizations. Findings: The COVID-19 pandemic has forced thousands of enterprises to let their employees work remotely, but many of these companies were not as technologically prepared for the situation as they thought. We are faced with increasing international cooperation and coordination. The outbreak of COVID-19 has accelerated the need for clear standards in remote and virtual teamwork. The article analyzed the positive and negative aspects of the impact of COVID-19 on organizations and ways of virtual leadership. Value Added: This article answers the questions about the main problems faced by managers who had to lead teams in a virtual way. Recommendations: The author is aware of the fact that this is only an exploratory study. It is recommended that in order to gain a fuller picture of the issues underlying the findings, quantitative research with large number of respondents should be undertaken.

A Conceptual Study on Virtual Leadership in Higher Education beyond COVID-19 Pandemic: Overcoming Challenges and Seizing Opportunities

A Conceptual Study on Virtual Leadership in Higher Education beyond COVID-19 Pandemic: Overcoming Challenges and Seizing Opportunities

Virtual Leadership: Key Factors for Its Analysis and Management

The development of information and communication technology (ICT), as well as the situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, have encouraged the adoption of nonconventional schemes of work based on virtuality. In this context, leadership becomes one of the main challenges to organizations and teams. The purpose of this paper is to identify the key factors related to virtual leadership and to propose a scheme for analysing and managing teams in virtuality. After a systematic literature review, the main results suggest that leadership in virtual environments should be considered as a shared phenomenon and that the key factors with the greatest impact on virtual leadership are communication, trust, and team cohesion. The paper highlights and characterises these factors, as well as the actions that should be taken to manage them. As a major contribution, a four-phase scheme is proposed for the analysis and management of leadership in virtuality. Finally, three future lines of research are suggested.

Good practices of delivery and teaching leadership for online educators in technical disciplines: A perspective

<p style="text-indent:20px;">While there are works on best practices in teaching, there is a lack of literature that concerns the associated leadership aspect. However, contemporary online educators largely play the role of leaders consciously or unconsciously. Further, STEM and technical social science subjects like finance can be related to a substantial cognitive load if instructions are poorly designed, and more so in an online context where students and educators may not have a close connection. This perspective article, drawing on the author's own experience as a successful online educator with consistently high student satisfaction scores and multiple teaching awards and referring to literature, conceptualizes good online teaching practices in technical disciplines across two dimensions – virtual leadership and cognitive load management. The perspective then suggests strategies particularly applicable in technical disciplines to achieve satisfactory learning outcomes. It is acknowledged that online delivery and style of teaching adopted by educators can be subjective and dependent on context. However, the practices suggested, including communicating expectations, developing trust-relationship with students, adaptations beyond conventional teaching and textbook, and designing and sequencing resources while considering cognitive load management, may positively impact online students' learning experience in STEM and technical social science disciplines.

The Effect of Digitalization and Virtual Leadership on Organizational Innovation During the COVID-19 Pandemic Crisis: A Case Study in Indonesia

The Effect of Digitalization and Virtual Leadership on Organizational Innovation During the COVID-19 Pandemic Crisis: A Case Study in Indonesia

The leadership pilgrimage: How a virtual pilgrimage transforms leaders

Leadership is a journey. However, few leaders embark on the type of journey that fosters greatness. That journey is best described as a pilgrimage, a leadership pilgrimage. A pilgrimage is a sacred journey with a purpose, one that requires vision, focus, and perseverance to complete. During the pilgrimage, pilgrims share a common experience: enlightenment through solitude and sacrifice. The Camino de Santiago is such a journey. It is a powerful metaphor for a leadership pilgrimage: a self-reflective journey leading to leadership enlightenment. This paper explores the impact of a virtual pilgrimage on the Way of St. James on leaders as they study five parallels between the Way of St. James and corporate leadership development. The Virtual Leadership Pilgrimage was created during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time of this writing, the first group of participants is enrolling. They will provide feedback regarding how transformative the Virtual Pilgrimage has been to their leadership experience. Our goal is to combine leadership development with the experience of walking the Way of St. James. Participants, like pilgrims, should stretch themselves in both body and spirit as they travel on their road to personal enlightenment. The virtual experience will mimic the pilgrimage experience through course materials, exercises, reflection, and following the Way of St. James virtually. As they do so, participants will experience the type of enlightenment that pilgrims experience on the Way of St. James. © 2021 Dublin Institute of Technology. All rights reserved.

Investigating the Factors Affecting Virtual Team Performance in Public Organizations

Despite numerous studies in private organizations on Virtual Teams (VTs), very little has been documented about the factors affecting the performance of VT members in public organizations. To fill this gap, this paper takes a qualitative and exploratory stance to explore this topic in Canadian public organizations. Through extensive interviews with 34 managers and employees, the findings uncovered three key issues that affect VT performance: virtual leadership characteristics, team member characteristics, and task characteristics, highlighting the implications of these issues and how they could be addressed. Finally, the findings offer managerial implications to support managers involved in VT management.

Ethical Principles of Virtual Leadership Construction in Artificial Intelligence Environment

In recent years, the discussion of artificial intelligence has become a trend. With artificial intelligence gradually replacing more human work, artificial intelligence plays the role of “semi rational man” in the era of big data. One of the key issues in the academic discussion is the ethical issues of artificial intelligence intervention in the work of rational social people, such as: Does the leadership of artificial intelligence intervention violate the ethical standards of most people? This paper takes the artificial intelligence intervention in the construction of virtual leadership as the thinking object, and puts forward some thoughts on the ethical principles of artificial intelligence.

Virtual Leadership in Small Businesses during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Challenges and Possibilities

The Covid19 pandemic has posed new challenges for leaders in both large and small businesses because of the new health measures that has forced people to work remotely to prevent the spread of the virus. This has led to organizations having to be managed virtually which brings with it its own set of challenges, especially for those who are unfamiliar with technology and used to face to face interaction. This is especially so for small businesses trying to remain afloat through resource constraints and a global economy in distress. Organizational leaders would need to have strategies in place to ensure that the productivity levels of employees remain as status quo or improve if that was possible. This research paper focuses on understanding the now very significant concept of virtual leadership in particular for small businesses by sieving through a focused literature review that covers this area of interest, including those that have suggested operating models that the leaders could utilize to invigorate their small businesses in order to subvert the projection by Bloomberg that $2.7 trillion would be the ultimate payout in terms of economic losses as a result of this pandemic.

Measuring KPIs of Virtual Teams in Global Organization Using Machine Learning

With the growing uncertainties around the global due to pandemic, many unavoidable market finance fluctuations and the management in industries are hit with the most due to lack of production and traditional industrial process methods are taking a huge hit during the current times and there came the need for the virtual industrialization method that is Industry 4.0 a current trend. Many industries are keen to find the method to extract the correct information on their key performance is still lacking in many areas. Next generation virtual leaders, global leaders and advances in technology are leading to the possibilities of virtual teams in order to execute business strategies. Adoption of permanent structures or methods to determine and calculate the performance of the employees and to access to best talent with rich cultural diversity as a form of competitive advantage. The Machine Learning influencing into the virtual leadership styles that helps in determining the KPIs who work remotely is soon to become the future of many companies and some are already implementing the structure to make the Artificial Intelligence to handle the next generation methodologies to formulate Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

Preparing Business Students for a Distributed Workforce and Global Business Environment: Gaining Virtual Leadership Skills in an Authentic Context

There is an increased demand for a skilled workforce that is prepared for work in today’s digital economy, which is often done in virtual teams. Thus, while many students today have little or no experience working in this mode, they are often placed in virtual teams early in their careers. We argue that that if students have the opportunity to acquire virtual leadership skills in an authentic setting in their undergraduate program, they will be more prepared when they are placed in virtual teams and virtual leadership roles in the workplace. An instructional strategy was implemented in a large online undergraduate business course to provide students with the experience of working in virtual teams in an authentic setting and the findings of the study highlight the importance of organization, technology management, communication, managing student perceptions, and coaching when using this strategy to teach virtual leadership and virtual team skills.

Is COVID-19 an opportunity to improve virtual leadership?

Integrating effective virtual leadership activities into general practice should become a priority in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A Pedagogy to Develop Effective Virtual Teams

ABSTRACT While virtual teams dominate business environments, little attention has been paid to how team leadership, in particular shared leadership, can be reinforced in classrooms. There is a consensus that shared leadership impacts the performance of virtual groups in a positive manner. While higher education in business is aiming to prepare graduates for virtual team leadership and effectiveness, pedagogical practices to orient students to virtual leadership based on quantitative research are lacking. Business school educators need to develop a classroom pedagogy that encourages the growth of shared leadership in virtual groups within students. This paper presents the results of preliminary research that demonstrates that one aspect of the skills of shared leadership, in the form of expertise-based teamwork, contributes to the success of virtual teams in a business class. How this pedagogical practice can be applied to the business setting is discussed. Replication of this work is planned.

Leading Matters: Take it from the Professionals—a High-Level Overview of Virtual Leadership According to Educational Technology Scholars (and a Few Others)

Leading Matters: Take it from the Professionals—a High-Level Overview of Virtual Leadership According to Educational Technology Scholars (and a Few Others)

Riddle Me This: What Do Innovation Implementation, a Powerful CEO, Functional Diversity, Paradoxical Virtual Leadership, Coworker Mentoring, and Surface Acting Have in Common? Answer: Outstanding 2018 GOM Articles

Riddle Me This: What Do Innovation Implementation, a Powerful CEO, Functional Diversity, Paradoxical Virtual Leadership, Coworker Mentoring, and Surface Acting Have in Common? Answer: Outstanding 2018 <i>GOM</i> Articles

Filling OpenStreetMap data gaps in rural Nepal: a digital youth internship and leadership Programme

Crowdsourced, open geospatial data such as the data compiled through OpenStreetMap have proven useful in addressing humanitarian, disaster and development needs. However, the existing ways in which volunteers engage in OpenStreetMap have inherent limitations that lead to critical data gaps in economically underdeveloped countries and regions. Various initiatives that target specific geospatial data gaps and engage volunteers for longer periods have emerged to overcome these limitations, yet there has been limited in-depth study of such targeted mapping initiatives. This article reports the findings from Digital Internship and Leadership (DIAL), a programme designed to fill data gaps in rural Nepal by engaging young people in mapping rural Nepal by integrating targeted mapping, a virtual internship strategy and youth leadership development. The findings suggest the potential benefits of targeted mapping initiatives embedded in youth leadership internship programmes to address those critical data gaps.

Impactful Leadership Traits of Virtual Leaders in Higher Education

Universities are increasingly leveraging virtual teams into the organizational structure and strategic framework for many functions including academic administration and faculty leadership. One benefit of a virtual workforce is the ability to hire the most qualified individuals regardless of where they are physically located. As the virtual workforce expands, leaders may intuitively rely on traditional face-to-face approaches and strategies for employee oversight and motivation. These techniques may be ineffective or challenging to use in the virtual environment necessitating new approaches. Leaders of virtual teams need to understand the intricacies associated with these groups and be cognizant of factors that assist in creating cohesiveness, trust, and communication amongst virtual teams. This qualitative phenomenological study explores leaders’ perceptions surrounding competencies needed to effectively lead virtual teams in online education. A decisive sampling method was used to identify 10 experienced academic leaders who supervise virtual teams. As a result of the interviews, seven major themes emerged: (a) training and development; (b) trust; (c) emotional intelligence; (d) communication/team building/technology; (e) employee recognition and motivation; (f) leadership styles; and (g) virtual leadership competencies unique to higher education. Based on these themes and further evaluation the need for specific soft skills and robust technology emerged. Specifically, organizational success partially hinges on comprehensive training for virtual leaders, the significance of trust, emotional intelligence, and effective, respectful communication.

Postać stalkera – retoryka przywództwa w postkatastroficznym świecie

W artykule analizie poddano postać stalkera, obecną w beletrystyce, filmie, grach wideo oraz w reportażu. Motyw stalkera został rozpatrzony w odniesieniu do problematyki przywództwa i towarzyszących jej mechanizmów retorycznych (np. perswazji opartej na wiedzy, wiarygodności, charyzmie, wirtualnej procedurze, autokreacji). Na podstawie interpretacji wybranych tekstów kultury wykazano, że figura stalkera jest związana z przywództwem sytuacyjnym, określanym przez kontekst świata po katastrofie. Wyszczególniono typy przywództwa zróżnicowane ze względu na sposób reprezentacji postaci stalkera (m.in. przywództwo autorytarne, charyzmatyczne, mistyczne, wirtualne).

Educational Leadership and Digital Culture

Digital culture is a new multifaceted notion that it is embedded with culture and arts, linking different aspects of cultures, media and information technologies. The emergence of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has created a connection between people through networks and challenged our traditional ways of comprehending culture and eventually digital culture. Therefore, culture today must be seen as a dynamic process rather than an enclosed system because ICT has given these associations a new facet. With it comes a change in economy and education in all levels including leadership. In line with this, the current global economy is changing due to the advancement of technology, and with it its leadership capacities. Moreover, innovative technology has the ability to change the distribution of power and the development of associations in today´s organizations. In the same context, some authors debate the following critical question, i.e., “how can educational leaders keep up with the daily onslaught of information when new literacies rapidly outpace traditional literacies, and access to technology and information expands exponentially?”. This question would have a wider implication if we consider other educational means which are called Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Based on that, this study examines different perspectives in this topic to determine what kind of educational leadership is emerging in the current new age of digital culture, and whether it is appropriate for the values and goals of education. In addition, it suggests and discusses the type of leadership needed in the digital culture using MOOCs as active dynamic examples. This study is structured into three interrelated sections. The first focuses on what digital culture is and examines a number of definitions and approaches. The second concentrates on leadership theories that are mostly associated with digital cultures, and examines whether they are appropriate for education based on another scholars’ work. The third section focuses on the author’s experience with Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) where the leadership style of the professors was observed and evaluated. The instrument used for this purpose was careful observation. And the theoretical framework was based on Ebrahim, Ahmed and Taha’s (2009) four aspects of effective virtual leadership, i.e., a) communication, b) understanding, c) role clarity, and d) leadership attitude.