This dissertation set out to explore the role of leadership processes in handling the particular challenges presented by a virtual context, and how such processes are accomplished in practice.
It was found that leadership was important in creating virtual continuities supporting team collaboration in an otherwise complex context. These leadership processes were accomplished in a collective collaboration between both formally appointed hierarchical leaders and
subordinates, both acting as influencer(s) and influenced, where important resources for accomplishing leadership were position, roles, and affordances offered by technology.
Answering these questions, this dissertation offers a number of theoretical contributions.
First, I show that leadership can be seen as a resource for producing virtual continuities, a way to handle the particular challenges presented by the virtual context. Subsequently, I find that accomplishing leadership and producing such continuities are not separate work tasks; rather, they are deeply entangled in the mundane, everyday work that is carried out in virtual team meetings.
Second, this dissertation shows that both team managers and team members can mobilize affordances from the objects at hand, as well as rights and obligations from explicitly assigned roles, to act as influencers in the leadership process. Subsequently, this finding prompts a consideration of how distributing access to objects or explicitly assigning local roles, such as that of chair, might be a way to engage subordinates in the leadership process in a structured, explicit manner.
Last but not least, aligning with previous studies, this dissertation shows that leadership is a collective accomplishment, and as such not the task of one single person. However, where previous research points to a dichotomous understanding of the leadership configuration between formally appointed hierarchical leaders and subordinates, this dissertation shows that the configuration is both situated and more complex. Understanding and approaching roles and positions as interactional accomplishments that situationally influence the interactional
environment prompts an ontological unification of leadership, which means that influence emanating from subordinates and formally appointed hierarchical leaders is treated analytically equally.
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This dissertation demonstrates the relevance of the leadership processes in a virtual context. It shows that the complex context fosters certain complexities, which can be experienced as discontinuities. Collectively producing leadership, understood as an interpersonal influence process, is a way to create virtual continuities to accomplish team performance in this complex context. Importantly, this work of producing virtual continuities is not an additional work task for the team, it is the work they carry out.
This dissertation was carried out on the basis of an EM/CA research process. Zooming in on the interaction allowed for fine-grained analysis, which could shed light on what Grint (2005a), as pointed out at the beginning of this dissertation, framed as a complex phenomenon, namely that of leadership understood as an interpersonal influence process. Aligning with previous studies, in particular the CA method, is well-suited for the analysis of leadership in interaction, as it allows for zooming in on the everyday work and situated interaction. That said, CA offers different levels of analysis. CA studies can either focus on small excerpts that can be generalized through collections, or longer excerpts that can shed light on complex social structures. Though this dissertation has applied CA, it is also relevant to question whether all aspects of this methodology are applicable for researching leadership. As such, I question whether collections of excerpts based on a few turns-at-talk are appropriate for analyzing a complex social phenomenon such as leadership.
Finally, this dissertation offers a number of practical contributions. First, as many organizations experience a certain complexity, it is tempting for team managers to lean on previous leadership literature and consequently act single-handedly to guard the team against challenges which may arise because of this complexity. That is problematic, as leadership is a team-effort. Practitioners should focus on the collective work tasks rather than on the team manager’s managerial tasks.
Second, although much research centers around what knowledge, skills, and competencies it takes to be a part of a virtual team, this dissertation prompts a focus on the virtual collaboration itself. The virtual context fosters subgroupings and thus induces a moral obligation from
everyone on the team to work to make the whole team relevant. Third, in making the team relevant as a whole is a collaborative task. Subsequently, collective leadership is particularly relevant in the virtual team context, as previous research also demonstrates. This dissertation shows that collective leadership can be nurtured by the virtual team manager by, for example, granting subordinates access to and control over ICT objects, or by assigning explicit local roles, such as that of meeting chair, which subordinates can then mobilize in the leadership process.
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I wrote the first sentence of this dissertation five years ago. Much has happened since then. One aspect that remains even more prominent is the importance of understanding the
accomplishment of work collaboration and leadership in a virtual context. Though this
dissertation may seem rather timely in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic, I believe that it is suitable to emphasize that virtual work collaboration is not a mayfly, rather it has been here for a long while, and it is here to stay. Technology will continue to develop, as should we, as humans, constantly learning and developing ourselves and our competencies to work with and through the technology. That said, I also believe that in a fast-paced, everyday world, understanding the complexity and depth of collaboration between technology and humans may be difficult to unravel. Consequently, it is an important task for us, as scholars, to continue the quest of
exploring collaboration in the virtual context and how leadership can support this collaboration.
This dissertation has focused on the interaction, taking the time to explore the subtle, everyday work interactions in virtual team meetings. This has given me the opportunity to uncover the small, mundane, far from grandiose, yet rather important, practical work of leadership within this complex context. As such, I believe that this dissertation advances our scholarly
understanding of leadership within a virtual context and thus allows us to support practitioners in their everyday work within a complex virtual context. Much more research is still needed in this area to shed light on what future technology might bring. That said, while future work collaboration might offer new interactional environments, other aspects remain the same, no matter the context.
“Talk really isn’t cheap; it’s consequential and far-reaching” (Boden, 1994: vii).
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