E-leadership strategy in virtual organizations and virtual teams

Abstract

In accordance with the globalization of trade and business, a new paradigm of work pattern known as Virtual Organization (VO) emerged in 1990s. VO particularly removes time and location barriers but links companies via ICTs which enable them to collaborate on a worldwide scale. While at same time being engaged in collaboration, VO partners have been increasingly relying on Virtual Team (VT) to fulfill designated tasks or projects, in which interaction and collaboration takes place among geographically distributed and often culturally disparate individuals.

This study focuses on e-leadership strategies, which basically refers to how to effectively and strategically lead VT members that are geographically dispersed. Clearly, leadership and relationship in VOs or VTs can prove challenging to build or sustain in virtual context where trust is difficult to build, influence is hard to articulate, and communication is often ambiguous. Among a range of e-leadership challenges inherent to the dispersed and often impersonal nature, technology, communication, cultural differences, trust, and logistics are the typical issues, thus will be addressed in this study.

This study aims to investigate the transition from traditional management to e-leadership in VOs or VTs; additionally, in order to establish a theoretical framework of leadership in VOs, this study will synthesize the leadership theories and models on the basis of literature reviews. The experimental study focuses on NRC (Nokia Research Center) and Talentor (Talentor Group Oy), which are representative in technology and business fields respectively. By conducting interview and survey as the methodologies, this study will explore how VOs and VTs are operated as well as how to improve the effectiveness of e-leadership.