Leadership Effectiveness in Global Virtual Teams

By Timothy R. Kayworth, Dorothy Elliott Leidner. Journal of Management Information Systems, 2002

814 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The trend toward physically dispersed work groups has necessitated a fresh inquiry into the role and nature of team leadership in virtual settings. To accomplish this, we assembled thirteen culturally diverse global teams from locations in Europe, Mexico, and the United States, assigning each team a project leader and task to complete. The findings suggest that effective team leaders demonstrate the capability to deal with paradox and contradiction by performing multiple leadership roles simultaneously (behavioral complexity). Specifically, we discovered that highly effective virtual team leaders act in a mentoring role and exhibit a high degree of understanding (empathy) toward other team members. At the same time, effective leaders are also able to assert their authority without being perceived as overbearing or inflexible. Finally, effective leaders are found to be extremely effective at providing regular, detailed, and prompt communication with their peers and in articulating role relationships (responsibilities) among the virtual team members. This study provides useful insights for managers interested in developing global virtual teams, as well as for academics interested in pursuing virtual team research.

Subfields: Communication, Management of Technology and Innovation, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2eb31db3dba684cf73c0e9cad8d2188933ee889c

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Citations in the corpus

Remote Leadership, Communication Effectiveness and Leader Performance (2010, background): “This may be related to reduced opportunities for interaction, reduced access to popular communication channels, time delays, and lack of shared language among diversified members (Powell et al. 2004; Kayworth and Leidner 2001).”
Managing virtual teams: A review of current empirical research (2005, background): “Such an approach changes the role of a team manager from traditional controlling into more coaching and moderating functions (Kayworth & Leidner, 2001).”
How Does the Digital Transformation Affect Organizations? Key Themes of Change in Work Design and Leadership (2018, background): “…Montealegre, 2016, p. 365) as most of it was conducted during earlier stages of digitalization (e. g. Barley, 1990; Cascio, 1995; Daft & Lengel, 1986; Kayworth & Leidner, 2001; Orlikowski & Robey, 1991; Zuboff, 1988) and hence focused on technologies nowadays considered as standard (e. g . email,…”
Virtual teams: a review of current literature and directions for future research (2004, methodology): “Almost without exception previous research has focused on self-directed teams (for a notable exception see Kayworth & Leidner, 2001-2002) with little attention to the role of managers and managerial structures.”
Nature of virtual teams: a summary of their advantages and disadvantages (2008, background): “Effective team leaders can also demonstrate the capability to deal with paradoxical situations and contradictions by performing multiple leadership roles simultaneously (Kayworth and Leidner, 2002).”
Bridging the Qualitative-Quantitative Divide: Guidelines for Conducting Mixed Methods Research in Information Systems (2013, methodology): “Validation was discussed in the qualitative study (i.e., Kayworth and Leidner 2002).”
Identification in Face-to-Face, Hybrid, and Pure Virtual Teams: Untangling the Contradictions (2005, background): “Anecdotal and case-based evidence suggests that roles in virtual teams tend to be somewhat ambiguous, leading to members’ need for role deﬁnition (Kayworth and Leidner 2002).”
Conflict and Performance in Global Virtual Teams (2006, background): “However, team diversity and space–time dispersion in a GVT may pose both opportunities for [57], as well as challenges to, effective teamwork [33, 55].”
Avatars, People, and Virtual Worlds: Foundations for Research in Metaverses (2009, positive): “Cultural differences, communication, and language barriers among team members can impact team effectiveness or impede feedback and interaction (Dubé and Paré, 2004, Kayworth and Leidner, 2001/2002, Maznevski and Chudoba, 2000).”
Getting Everyone on Board: The Role of Inspirational Leadership in Geographically Dispersed Teams (2009, background): “In these dispersed settings, the leader may have the potential to " replace " the physical, social, and psychological markers of team membership and shape attitudes directed at the team (Avolio et al. 2000, Bell and Kozlowski 2002, Kayworth and Leidner 2002).”
The Impact of Team Empowerment on Virtual Team Performance: The Moderating Role of Face-to-Face Interaction (2004, background): “Because virtual teams can rapidly respond to business globalization challenges (Kayworth & Leidner, 2001; Maznevski & Chudoba, 2000; Montoya-Weiss et al., 2001), their use is expanding exponentially (Kirkman et al., 2002).”
Global virtual teams for value creation and project success: A case study (2008, background): “The control theme is particularly relevant to BankCo’s global virtual teams, bringing to the fore Kayworth and Leidner’s [35] observation of a dichotomy between members wanting and expecting strong leadership and team leaders who, faced with the practical constraints of distance and the lack of dire”
Framing the Effects of Multinational Cultural Diversity on Virtual Team Processes (2016, background): “Because VTs include members from different countries and are typically culturally diverse (Powell et al., 2004), researchers are studying global teams in a virtual setting (e.g., Jarvenpaa & Leidner, 1999; Kayworth & Leidner, 2002; Maznevski & Chudoba, 2000).”