A Pedagogy to Develop Effective Virtual Teams

Virtual team-cooperation from home-office: a quantitative diary study of the impact of daily transformational- and passive-avoidant leadership - and the moderating role of task interdependence

During the Covid-19 pandemic, most of the workforce moved from office setting to home-office and virtual teamwork. Whereas the relationship between leadership and team cooperation in physical settings is well documented - less is known about how daily virtual team cooperation is influenced by daily constructive as well as destructive leadership, and how intervening mechanisms influence this relationship. In the present study, we test the direct effect of daily transformational- and passive avoidant leadership, respectively, on the daily quality of virtual team cooperation - and the moderating effect of task interdependence. Using virtual team cooperation as outcome, we hypothesized that (a) transformational leadership relates positively to virtual team cooperation, (b) passive-avoidant leadership relates negatively, and (c) moderated by task interdependence. Our hypotheses were tested in a 5-day quantitative diary study with 58 convenience sampled employees working from home in virtual teams. The results show that virtual team cooperation is a partially malleable process - with 28% variation in daily virtual team cooperation resulting from within team variation from day to day. Surprisingly, the results of multilevel modeling lend support only to the first hypothesis (a). Taken together, our findings suggest that in virtual settings, inspirational and development-oriented transformational leadership plays a key role in daily team cooperation, while passive-avoidance has little impact - independently of task interdependence. Hence, in virtual team settings, the study shows that "good is stronger than bad" - when comparing the negative effects of destructive leadership to the positive effect of constructive and inspirational leadership. We discuss the implications of these findings for further research and practice.

Digital Leadership: A Bibliometric Analysis

Digital disruption has changed organizations in an unprecedented way. The thriving field of digital leadership is expanding fast and few retrospective studies on this evolution have been made so far. This study presents a bibliometric and network analysis combining both Scopus and Web of Science databases to provide fresh insights into the evolution of the digital leadership research field. This study is based on a review of 79 publications from 57 journals, published between 2000 and 2020. The newness of the topic and the range of journals in which it is published confirms that digital leadership has gained interest from several different areas. Bibliometric analysis provides a description of the research field identifying the leading publishing journals, affiliation statistics, and most influential authors and expressive publications in the research field. Network analyses identify keyword evolution over time, co-citation relationships, and research clusters. Content analysis is used to identify key topics in the field with attention paid to interrelations among them. A brief description of each paper in the dataset and its methodological approach is provided. The results suggest that the topic will continue to attract more research, as it has not yet entered its maturity stage. This paper contributes to the literature by analyzing the relationship between digital leadership and e-leadership. This study also identifies the most leading digital leadership capabilities for a fast-changing world. Limitations and future avenues are also discussed.

What research tells us about leadership styles, digital transformation and performance in state higher education?

Purpose

Considering the current importance of leadership, digital transformation and performance in the changes state higher education institutions (HEIs) have been subject to, this study aims to present an analysis of how these three concepts have been related in the literature.

Design/methodology/approach

This study proposes to study the state-of-the-art of research on leadership styles, digital transformation and performance in a single study, through a systematic literature review using two major databases, ISI Web of Science and Scopus.

Findings

The results reveal that the most common leadership style in the articles analysed is transformational; the most studied dimension of performance is the one representing teaching and learning activities; and the most discussed aspects of digital transformation are those concerning online learning systems and various types of technology. Identifying gaps in the literature, a future research agenda is formulated.

Originality/value

Amongst the theoretical implications of this study are the importance of understanding leadership styles and digital transformation for better understanding of state HEIs' performance as well as its dimensions, considering the relations found between these constructs. Therefore, there is greater theoretical advancement in the study of transformational leadership, diverse educational technologies, online teaching systems, global performance and teaching/learning.