How teleworking adoption is changing the labor market and workforce dynamics?

This article investigates how teleworking adoption influenced the labor market and workforce dynamic using bibliometric methods to overview 86 years of teleworking research [1936-2022]. By grouping the retrieved articles available on the Web of Science (WOS) core collection database, we revealed a holistic and topical view of teleworking literature using clustering and visualization techniques. Our results reflect the situation where the adoption of teleworking in the last three years was accelerated by the pandemic and facilitated by innovation in remote work technologies. We discussed the factors influencing one's decision to join the workforce or a specific company, besides the unintended consequences of the rapid adoption of teleworking. The study can aid organizations in developing adequate teleworking arrangements, enhancing employee outcomes, and improving retention rates. Furthermore, it can help policymakers design more effective policies to support employees, improve labor force participation rates, and improve societal well-being.

Global Virtual Team Leadership Scale (GVTLS) Development in Multinational Companies

As a result of developments in technology, globalization and digitalization, virtual teams have become indispensable for many industries. Transformations in information and communication technology have provided new opportunities for businesses to create and manage virtual teams. Today, all organizations have had to introduce new methods of communication and have started to continue their conversations through digital platforms. It has become inevitable for teams to form in such virtual environments. Virtual team members are made up of individuals from different genders, experiences, cultures and geographic locations. While there are leaders in virtual teams as in face-to-face environments, this type of leadership performs its function through information and communication technologies, unlike traditional types. Although there are many studies on face-to-face leadership in academic studies and despite the increasing use of digital platforms, it is observed that there is a need for studies on leadership styles in virtual organizations. The main purpose of this study is to create a scale about leadership characteristics in virtual teams. With the present study, it is aimed to develop a valid and reliable scale in order to discover and analyze the virtual team leadership characteristics of individuals within the multinational companies. During the scale development process, literature review, focus group interviews and statistical analysis were used to create the items to be included in the scale. First of all, focus group discussions were conducted by examining the scale developments on the leadership phenomenon. A total of three focus group interviews were held; expert opinions were used to ensure the content validity of the results, and a draft scale with 29 items was created as a result.

Towards remote leadership in health care: Lessons learned from an integrative review

AIM

To gather and synthesize current empirical evidence on remote leadership and to provide knowledge that can be used to develop successful remote leadership in health care.

DESIGN

A integrative literature review with an integrated mixed methods design.

DATA SOURCES

The literature search was carried out between February and March 2019 in the CINAHL, Medline (Ovid), PsycInfo, Scopus, SocIndex, Web of Science and Business Source Elite (EBSCO) databases.

REVIEW METHODS

An integrative review was conducted to identify relevant studies published from 2010 to 2019. Of the 88 eligible studies, 21 studies met the inclusion criteria and were selected for the final review. The included studies were analysed using mixed methods synthesis, more specifically, data-based convergent synthesis.

RESULTS

The performed analysis identified three main themes: characteristics of successful remote leadership; enhancing the leader-member relationship; and challenges in remote leadership. The first theme included the following sub-themes: remote leader characteristics; trust; communication; and leading the team culture. The second theme covered the importance of organizing regular face-to-face meetings, clear communication policies and the connection between positive team spirit and good remote leader-member relationship, while the third theme emphasized leader- and member-related challenges for remote work.

CONCLUSIONS

As none of the identified studies had been conducted in a health care setting, future remote leadership research must also specifically consider the health care context. This will be pivotal to exploring how remote work can foster a safe workplace culture, empower health care workers, increase job satisfaction and improve patient outcomes.

IMPACT

Remote leadership has rarely been studied in the health care context. Trust, communication, team spirit and a leader's characteristics are central to remote leadership, a finding which is useful for re-evaluating and improving the current culture at health care organizations.

Health-Oriented Self- and Employee Leadership in Virtual Teams: A Qualitative Study with Virtual Leaders

Virtual teamwork as a new way of working is becoming increasingly prevalent in a growingly globalized and digitalized working environment. Due to the associated raise in health-related stress factors at the workplace and the central role of leaders in workplace health promotion, the aim of this study is to obtain initial findings on the use of health-oriented self- and employee leadership in virtual teams from the perspective of virtual leaders. Semi-structured telephone interviews were conducted with 13 virtual leaders by using the problem-centered interview method. The collected data were deductively and inductively evaluated and interpreted using the qualitative content analysis according to Mayring. The results show that virtual leaders ascribed great value of health and showed great awareness in health-oriented self- and employee leadership. Physical activity and boundary management were particularly mentioned as health-oriented self-leadership behaviors. The majority of leaders described communication, building trust, support in boundary management and implementation of personal meetings as health-oriented employee leadership behaviors. In addition to social, technical, and personal factors, primarily organizational factors were mentioned as factors of influence in this context. For a more comprehensive understanding of health-oriented leadership, the inclusion of virtual team members in further research studies is necessary.

Accomplishing leadership-in-interaction by mobilizing available information and communication technology objects in a virtual context

Leadership-in-interaction is a somewhat underdeveloped area of research which to date has concentrated on talk-in-interaction to the detriment of other modalities. Consequently, this paper seeks to illustrate how social actors make use of different modalities to accomplish leadership, which we conceptualize as the creation of direction, alignment, and commitment. Through multimodal conversation analysis this paper explores interactions between actors in virtual contexts, a particularly interesting empirical setting as the context offers specific constraints on everyday workplace interaction. By zooming in on the interaction using transcripts of naturally occurring interaction, we find that the accomplishment of leadership, direction, alignment, and commitment, in a constrained virtual context can appear mundane. However, at the same time the accomplishment of leadership calls for the mobilization of several multimodal resources (both talk and information and communication technology objects). The analysis makes it evident that the actors mobilize objects to draw on their situated affordances, in the accomplishment of direction, alignment, and commitment. With a fine-grained analysis of naturally occurring data, we illustrate that leadership is a collective achievement. We also expand the understanding of leadership in practice, especially in virtual contexts, by demonstrating how actors utilize objects and verbal resources in the co-production of leadership.

Paradoxical Virtual Leadership: Reconsidering Virtuality Through a Paradox Lens

This conceptual article moves the conversation about virtual leadership forward by blending extant knowledge on virtuality and on leadership. Drawing on paradox theory, we show that virtuality is a paradox; therefore, virtual leadership’s core function is to deal with paradox. Our paradoxical virtual leadership model introduces three distinct leadership styles: synergistic, selective, and stagnant. Synergistic leaders view virtuality through a both–and cognitive framework, integrate divergent forces into synergistic solutions, and engage in varied, even opposing, behaviors to synergize virtuality’s paradoxical tensions and leverage the power of paradox. In contrast, selective leaders view virtuality through an either–or framework, and attempt to either manage virtuality’s challenges, or to capitalize on its opportunities, thus failing to balance paradoxical tensions. Finally, stagnant leaders adopt an avoidant framework, ignoring or avoiding virtuality’s paradoxes, and fail to lead effective virtual teams. The practical implications of this model—especially as they relate to how virtual leaders can synergize paradoxical tensions—are discussed.

Virtually anonymous: Does the absence of social cues alter perceptions of emergent leader behaviors?

This qualitative study examined the impact of the absence of social cues on perceptions of emergent leader behaviors in a highly anonymous virtual context. Participants were 149 students engaged in a distinct leadership-preparation process with identity fully hidden. Positively influential behaviors included specific types of contributions, task-focused behaviors, positive interaction style, and at times high participation rate. Excessive or minimal task focus and negative interaction style were perceived as negative influence. Further, emergent leaders often enacted behaviors in combination to achieve influence. Explicit assumptions about and references to social cues were absent in responses, suggesting that under highly anonymous conditions, we can get a less contaminated view of leader behaviors. The findings indicate that some existing leader behavior theories may be unbiased by social status, and also suggest that contextual nuances such as degrees of anonymity and availability of social cues are relevant for perceptions and practice of emergent leader behaviors.

The role of team leadership in Portuguese child protection teams

The majority of team leadership studies have ignored the specific context in which that leadership takes place and the cyclical correlation of inputs and processes on ongoing performance. It is our contention that leadership is a mediator of team processes and team effectiveness on ongoing functioning of multidisciplinary teams (MDT). The members of 126 multidisciplinary teams responded to a survey on several aspects related to the functioning and leadership of their teams. The results support the hypothesis that leadership does mediate the relationship between reflexivity and effectiveness (i.e. team management performance, boundary spanning and satisfaction) within the team. Theoretically, these findings challenge those of linear models that typically analyse the impact of leadership as something that happens in isolation. Future research should describe and consider not just the team type and tasks but also investigate the roles that context and time play in team leadership.