THE IMPACTOFTECHNOLOGYON EMERGENT LEADERSHIPBEHAVIORSAND PERCEPTIONS IN SRI LANKA

Organizations are increasingly making use of technology to facilitate collaboration and communication within teams. Such computer-mediated work arrangements are not limited by geography and often require new work practices including more proactive individual participation – or emergent leadership. While emergent leadership has been studied extensively in North America, much less work has been done in other cultures. In this paper we report the findings from a longitudinal study of emergent leadership behavior in computer-supported project teams in Sri Lanka with special attention paid to the role of gender. Also, the relationship between actual leadership behaviors and leadership perceptions is investigated. Similar to North American studies we found that technology helped level the playing field for women enabling them to engage in emergent leadership behavior. Further, women engaging in both task- and socially-oriented leadership behaviors were positively perceived by team mate

Conflict, Leadership, and Performance: What Virtual Team Members Need to Know

Conflict and leadership are both individually well-studied elements of group development. In this paper we seek to understand how leadership and conflict coexist within a team’s development and what the temporal context is within which they emerge for higher- versus lower-performing teams. In order to investigate this question we collected survey data, message postings and performance scores for 22 virtual teams over an 11-week period. Our results suggest that high-performing teams experience less relational conflict, engage in more task leadership, and respond more promptly to conflict with appropriate leadership behaviors. We situate these findings in the context of what virtual team members need to know

Emergent leadership, Gender, and Culture: The Case of Sri Lanka

Organizations are increasingly making use of technology to put together people from different geographic areas to collaborate and communicate in order to accomplish assigned tasks. Such virtual work arrangements are not limited by country borders. These virtual team arrangements require many new work practices including more proactive individual participation – or emergent leadership. While emergent leadership has been studied extensively in North America, much less work has been done in other cultures. In this paper we report the findings from a longitudinal study of emergent leadership behavior in virtual project teams in Sir Lanka with special attention paid to the role of gender. Similar to North American studies we found that technology helped level the playing field for women enabling them to engage in emergent leadership behavior

Distributing Leadership

{Excerpt} The prevailing view of leadership is that it is concentrated or focused. In organizations, this makes it an input to business processes and performance—dependent on the attributes, behaviors, experience, knowledge, skills, and potential of the individuals chosen to impact these. The theory of distributed leadership thinks it best considered as an outcome. Leadership is defined by what one does, not who one is. Leadership at all levels matters and must be drawn from, not just be added to, individuals and groups in organizations

Leadership in partially distributed teams

Inter-organizational collaboration is becoming more common. When organizations collaborate they often do so in partially distributed teams (PDTs). A PDT is a hybrid team that has at least one collocated subteam and at least two subteams that are geographically distributed and communicate primarily through electronic media. While PDTs share many characteristics with both traditionally collocated and fully distributed teams, they also have unique characteristics and issues. This dissertation reports on a field study of PDTs conducted over two semesters with student participants, This research was conducted as part of a larger series of studies investigating PDTs, In these studies, participants were formed into PDTs of two collocated subteams each. The task was to produce requirements for an emergency response information system for a specified country. Study 1 varied leadership configuration but held distance constant. Study 2 varied both leadership configuration and distance. Although distance was to be measured as cultural, geographic, and temporal distance, multicollinearity issues arose and cultural distance was dropped from the analysis. Distance was measured as time zone differences which, because the subteams in a team had east-west geographic distance, captured the geographic distance as well. Data collection was through surveys and personal reflections, Personal reflections are open ended survey questions for which the subjects reflected on their experiences the previous week in a PDT. This dissertation reports on qualitative and quantitative analyses of Study 1 data and quantitative analysis of Study 2 data, In addition to bivariate analyses of the survey data conducted separately for each study, multivariate analysis using Partial Least Squares (PLS) was performed on the combined Study 1 and Study 2 data. Factor analysis resulted in the identification of three types of trust: Expertise Trust, Personal Trust, and Process Trust, Trust was measured in the first personal reflection (after one week) and in the post survey at the end of the four week project, Early trust has the dimensions of Expertise Trust, Personal Trust, and Process Trust while longer term trust is comprised of Personal Trust and Process Trust. The results partially support the proposed research model. Strong support was found for the proposition that leadership roles identified by Quinn (1988) and examined in fully virtual and traditionally collocated teams are enacted in PDTs as well, Results suggest that leadership configuration influences leader role enactments. Trust was found to be important to team outcomes and influenced by media used and distance. Leadership role enactments were associated with perceptions of leader effectiveness, perceptions of performance, and satisfaction. Results suggest that leader effectiveness is associated with trust, perceptions of performance, and satisfaction. That is, trust, leadership configuration, distance, and leader role enactments all play important roles in PDTs. The results add insights into leadership and trust in partially distributed teams, which can inform professionals as to issues, leadership configurations, and leadership behaviors (roles) that will promote successful outcomes

Non-linear Dynamics and Leadership Emergence

The process by which leaders emerge from leaderless groups is well-documented, but not nearly as well understood. This article describes how non-linear dynamical systems concepts of attractors, bifurcations, and self-organization culminate in a swallowtail catastrophe model for the leadership emergence process, and presents the experimental results that the model has produced thus far for creative problem solving, production, and coordination-intensive groups. Several control variables have been identified that vary in their function depending on what type of group is involved, e.g. creative problem solving, production, and coordination-intensive groups. The exposition includes the relevant statistical strategies that are based on non-linear regression along with some directions for new research questions that can be explored through this non-linear model

Technical and Environmental Challenges of Collaboration Engineering in Distributed Environments

Collaboration in distributed settings has become a reality in organizational life. Yet we still have much to learn about issues inherent to distributed collaboration. One important area of study is the integration of Collaboration Engineering in distributed virtual teams for helping them in structuring their interaction. The field of Collaboration Engineering offers promising guidelines for process structures, but its application in distributed arenas is just beginning to be studied. We report on the design and development of a new collaboration environment for the incorporation of Collaboration Engineering principles, as well as the results of an initial study that examined leadership and process structure effects on the development of shared understanding. The paper describes the research motivation, the environment, and the results of the study, including an analysis of participants’ feedback and their message exchanges. We discuss both technical and environmental challenges for research on Collaboration Engineering in distributed environments

An Empirical Investigation of Virtual World Projects and Metaverse Technology Capabilities

Metaverses are immersive three-dimensional virtual worlds (VWs) where people interact with each other and their environment, using the metaphor of the real world but without its physical limitations. Unique technology capabilities of metaverses have the potential to enhance the conduct of virtual projects, but little is known about virtual worlds in this context. Virtual project teams struggle in meeting stated project outcomes due to challenges related to communication, shared understanding, and coordination. One way to address these challenges is to consider the use of emerging technologies, such as metaverses, to minimize the impact on virtual project teams. Applying a theoretical foundation for virtual teams in metaverses that includes both technology capabilities and the social interaction that takes place in the metaverse environment, we conducted an empirical investigation of project teams in a virtual world setting. The study examined the interplay of communication, representation, interaction, and team process tools with behaviors that led to role clarity, shared understanding, and coordination. While each individual technology capability contributed to project execution and outcomes, much of the power of the environment emerged through the interplay of social behaviors and technology capabilities. The results have intriguing implications for how metaverse technology capabilities might provide new ways to address gaps in the current research and practice of virtual project management and virtual teams

Team Learning: A Theoretical Integration and Review

With the increasing emphasis on work teams as the primary architecture of organizational structure, scholars have begun to focus attention on team learning, the processes that support it, and the important outcomes that depend on it. Although the literature addressing learning in teams is broad, it is also messy and fraught with conceptual confusion. This chapter presents a theoretical integration and review. The goal is to organize theory and research on team learning, identify actionable frameworks and findings, and emphasize promising targets for future research. We emphasize three theoretical foci in our examination of team learning, treating it as multilevel (individual and team, not individual or team), dynamic (iterative and progressive; a process not an outcome), and emergent (outcomes of team learning can manifest in different ways over time). The integrative theoretical heuristic distinguishes team learning process theories, supporting emergent states, team knowledge representations, and respective influences on team performance and effectiveness. Promising directions for theory development and research are discussed

Leading from a Distance: Advancements in Virtual Leadership Research

Although leadership has long been recognized as critical in virtual environments, observers have noted that a surprisingly small number of studies have focused on virtual leadership. In the current chapter we examine what we currently know about virtual leadership and identify promising future research directions. We begin by examining changes in the leadership context, most notably advances in technology and the growing adoption of virtual work arrangements. We then trace the evolution of the research that has examined virtual leadership at both the dyadic and team levels, highlighting key conceptual and empirical advances. Finally, we conclude the chapter by discussing future research directions that have the potential to make important contributions to both theory and practice in the area of virtual leadership