E-leadership

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E-leadership is a social influence process, mediated by technology, to produce a change in attitudes, feelings, thinking, behavior, and performance with individuals, groups, or organizations to direct them toward achieving a specific goal. [1] [2] As stated by Avolio and Kahai (2002), [1] this involves enhancing the relationships among organizational members in a context in which work is mediated by technology. In this case, communication and the collection and dissemination of information occurs via information technology. [1] Traditionally, leadership in organizations involves face-to-face interaction. Now, leaders may lead entire projects from a distance and interact with followers solely through information technology. [1] Today, organizations are incorporating technology for workplace communication, creating a need for e-leadership. This wiring involves forms of technology such as videoconferencing, online collaboration software, cellphones, e-mail, and Wi-Fi. [2] As a result, organizations are struggling with technological-integration issues while employees face a steep learning curve. [2] [3] However, our understanding of how information systems change human dynamics has lagged behind the introduction and use of new technology. Thus, technology is being used without knowing the full extent of its impact on human dynamics in organizations. [1]

Contents

The challenge of virtual leading

According to Cook (2010), [4] leaders in a virtual environment have the same basic responsibilities as face-to-face leaders such as organizing and motivating teams, monitoring progress, and developing team members. especially since technology allows one to work from anywhere, [2] However, e-leaders face added challenges such as monitoring from a distance, building teams drawn from different cultures, motivating followers, responding to questions, increasing flexibility to meet rapid technological changes, and developing technical skills like learning how to use technology to facilitate leadership. Additionally, enhanced communication skills are needed to establish trust, closeness and ensure messages aren't misinterpreted which requires more often communication and extra work. [4] Finally, it is difficult to establish close bonds when separated by time and space; thus e-leaders have a significant role in the development of relationships in virtual teams.

E-leadership research

Researchers have investigated e-leadership in both the organizational and laboratory setting. According to Avolio and Kahai (2002), [1] field studies of virtual teams suggest that early interactions during the formation of the teams can predict subsequent trust, satisfaction, and performance. [1] For example, teams who spent early meetings identifying team members and clarifying expectations were found to have higher performance several months later. [1] Thus, in order to provide virtual teams with a reason to work together, e-leaders should promote interdependence and reliance on each other. [2] Virtual teams may be geographically and culturally dispersed. Thus, in order to foster close relationships in geographically dispersed teams, leaders should encourage a variety of task-related communication. [2] E-leadership has also been investigated in more controlled settings. According to Avolio and Kahai (2002), [1] controlled experiments on e-leadership suggest that participative leadership may be more suitable for generating solutions for un- or semi-structured problems while directive leadership may be more suitable for generating solutions for structured problems. These studies also report that features of the groupware system that is used for communication may substitute for leadership. [1] Finally, controlled experiments also report that motivation is enhanced by anonymity. [1] Thus, e-leaders should probably consider using anonymous chat rooms and polls as mentioned previously.

E-Leadership Approaches/Styles

E-leadership can involve the same style and content as traditional face-to-face leadership, especially as the advancement of technology enables more visual virtual interactions. [1] Participative leadership involves creating opportunities for individuals to be more involved in decision-making. [1] Considering the importance of having members involved in the decision-making process, participative e-leaders can use technology such as chat rooms with anonymous input and electronic polls as tools to inform both their followers and themselves. [1] Like the more traditional transformational leadership, e-leadership can also be inspiring. To this end, e-leaders can use tools such as e-mail to communicate compelling visions, pride in the accomplishments of followers, or excitement about new ventures. [1]

Successful E-leadership

In the case of e-leadership, a successful leader may have the added challenge of building relationships and trust more rapidly. [1] Close personal relationships are possible in virtual settings and leaders can aid in fostering them by considering factors of media richness. [2] In choosing modes of communication, these leaders must consider its capacity to provide immediate feedback, availability of personalization, and language variety. [2] To this end, leaders need to learn the vividness and interactivity of media to make their presence felt in a positive way. [2] Avolio and Kahai (2002) [1] mention that successful e-leadership involves an appropriate balance of traditional and new methods, avoiding misunderstandings by carefully and clearly communicating intent to followers, using technology to reach out to others in responsive ways, and using technology to deal with greater workforce diversity.

See also

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Team</span> Group linked in a common purpose

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Team building</span> Term for activities used to enhance social relations and define roles within teams

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Workforce productivity</span> Concept in economics

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Virtual collaboration is the method of collaboration between virtual team members that is carried out via technology-mediated communication. Virtual collaboration follows the same process as collaboration, but the parties involved in virtual collaboration do not physically interact and communicate exclusively through technological channels. Distributed teams use virtual collaboration to simulate the information transfer present in face-to-face meetings, communicating virtually through verbal, visual, written, and digital means.

Social presence theory explores how the "sense of being with another" is influenced by digital interfaces in human-computer interactions. Developed from the foundations of interpersonal communication and symbolic interactionism, social presence theory was first formally introduced by John Short, Ederyn Williams, and Bruce Christie in The Social Psychology of Telecommunications. Research on social presence theory has recently developed to examine the efficacy of telecommunications media, including SNS communications. The theory notes that computer-based communication is lower in social presence than face-to-face communication, but different computer-based communications can affect the levels of social presence between communicators and receivers.

Authentic leadership, while having no formal or unequivocal definition, is a growing field in academic research. The idea has also been embraced by leaders and leadership coaches, who view it as an alternative to leaders who emphasize profit and share price over people and ethics. There appears to be some consensus in the literature about the qualities an authentic leader must have. These include self-awareness, the ability to trust one's thoughts, feelings, motives and values, self reflection, responsiveness to feedback, and the ability to resolve conflict in honest and non-manipulative ways. An authentic leader is supposedly able to further the success of an organization within the confines of social and ethical values, even when that seems impossible. Authentic leadership is claimed to be a superior model due to the greater trust and motivation it invokes in subordinates. Much of the evidentiary basis for authentic leadership has been called into question and papers have been retracted.

Virtual exchange is an instructional approach or practice for language learning. It broadly refers to the "notion of 'connecting' language learners in pedagogically structured interaction and collaboration" through computer-mediated communication for the purpose of improving their language skills, intercultural communicative competence, and digital literacies. Although it proliferated with the advance of the internet and web 2.0 technologies in the 1990s, its roots can be traced to learning networks pioneered by Célestin Freinet in 1920s and, according to Dooly, even earlier in Jardine's work with collaborative writing at the University of Glasgow at the end of the 17th to the early 18th century.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 Avolio, B. J.; Kahai, S. S. (2002). "Adding the "e" to e-leadership: How it may impact your leadership". Organizational Dynamica. 31 (4): 325–338. doi:10.1016/S0090-2616(02)00133-X.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Crawford-Mathis, K. J. (2009). Concepts and challenges of e-leadership. In Lee, I. (2009). Electronic Business: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications. Hershey, PA: IGI Global. pp. 1748–1753.
  3. Pulley, M. L.; Sessa, V.; Malloy, M. (2002). "E-Leadership: A two-pronged idea". T + D. 56 (3): 34–40.
  4. 1 2 Cook, S. G. (2010). "E-Learning requires teaching e-leadership online". Women in Higher Education. 19 (12): 7-7. doi:10.1002/whe.10124.