Important findings
Hypothesis 2: The virtual leader phrases narratives openly to allow listeners to read themselves into the story
Fit with the enacting level. Virtual leadership is highly based on the use of discourses to enact social realities among dispersed groups. Here, the leaders must reflect on the desired enacted environment, as the choice of words is directly contributing to the state of the organisational culture. The intention of this thesis is to uncover how performance can be secured and therefore stories centred round productivity may stimulate a more productive team.
Virtual leader as connector
A thread running through our actions is the specific need for personal relations to be bridged between the organisational members. Bottke of Polycom explains above how it is mandatory for her ability to cooperate with her colleagues that she knows and
understands the person she is communicating with virtually. A social relationship can help ground a latent awareness of the other person, despite geographical separations, and improve the team’s performance.
Since virtual organisations face different circumstantial challenges, approaches to culture-‐performance relationships are likely to be within a contingency perspective.
Goffe & Jones (1998) address the matter by asserting that there is no “right” solution for solving the dilemmas of organisational culture; the most appropriate culture for an organisation is the one that helps it cope with its competitive surroundings.
Some of my American colleagues found me weird when I met them, because I asked whether they had a wife and children and what they did and they weren’t used to this behaviour. There is a very big
difference in how personal you can be. I have been asking about these things, because it is important for me to have an understanding of the person I am sitting with. “What background does he have?” and “what excites him in his life?”. (Bottke, 8) Hypothesis 3: The virtual leader brings discourses to enact attentiveness to the need for productivity.
Goffe & Jones (1998) are preoccupied with the concepts of sociability and solidarity in their analysis organisational culture.
Firstly, the term sociability expresses the degree of friendliness between members or a community or group and where sociability is high, people help each other because they want to, with no thought of favours in return. This dimension of the relationship between people is essentially based on feeling and emotions and where it exists, people tend to value the relationship for its own sake. The advantages of high sociability are high morale, fostering of teamwork, creativity, openness and sharing of ideas, and promotion of innovation and uninhibited cross-‐fertilisation of ideas. The disadvantages are that strong friendships can mean that poor performance is tolerated, it may
degenerate into cliques, cabals, in-‐groups and out-‐groups, which results in behind-‐the-‐
scenes politicking, and it may be an unpleasant situation for people who value their own personal space and privacy for thought.
Secondly, solidarity expresses the degree of collectiveness (as opposed to
individuality) in the relationship between people. Where solidarity is high, people have a sense of common purpose because they have shared goals, tasks and mutual interests.
Thus, even if people do not particularly like or admire their colleagues, they tend to make common cause and work well together. The advantages of high solidarity are ruthless commitment to getting done what needs to get done, stimulating team feeling of working towards and achieving mutually agreed goals, and clarity about the rewards for good behaviour. The disadvantages are that cultures that are high in solidarity can be ruthless in suppressing dissenters and too strong a focus on group goals can oppress or hurt individuals.
Based on sociability and solidarity, Goffe & Jones (1998) introduce the Double S Cube, which has sociability on the vertical axis and solidarity on the horizontal axis – both with values running from high to low. The model is presented in a 3D square to highlight the negative aspects behind all values of the model. Organisations characterised by high sociability and low solidarity are a networked culture (usually large, highly successful companies, which perhaps had a communal culture at an earlier stage). The opposite version, characterised by low sociability and high solidarity, yields a mercenary culture (beneficial in a fast-‐changing business environment where competitive pressures are high). An organisation low on both dynamics is termed a fragmented
culture (interdependence between activities is low and critical success factor is having star individuals in particular fields), and an organisation with both high sociability and high solidarity is referred to as a communal culture (frequently found in thrusting, successful, small to medium-‐sized organisations, occasionally in larger firms).
When Bottke expresses that “it is important for me to have an understanding of the person I am sitting with” (Bottke, 8), she emphasises her wish to bring Polycom from a mercenary culture towards a communal culture, in which not only solidarity, but also sociability ranks high on the organisational agenda. Given the lack of sociability nurtured by time spent physically together, the need for sociability is more explicit in virtual organisations and the pressure on the leader to connect group members and secure a high sociability is larger than in traditional organisations.
A pattern of adherence to the communal culture can be found among all our case studies and it resonates well with the challenges of virtual organisations. Strong sociability results in people working in a highly collaborative, flexible and mutually supportive way, and their high solidarity unites them in a common sense of purpose:
“the competition tends to be seen as an enemy that needs to be defeated” (Goffee &
Jones, 1998:29).
Positive
Negative
THE COMMUNAL
CULTURE
THE NETWORKED
CULTURE
THE FRAGMENTED
CULTURE
THE MERCENARY
CULTURE
High
High Low
Low
Sociability
Solidarity
Model 8 – Double S Curve (Goffe & Jones, 1998:22)
Fit with the structuring level. Leaders who connect the social strings of their virtual organisations by taking part in, supporting and arranging sociability-‐increasing events will at the same time ground social structures that can knit the work processes closer together and secure performance despite geographical dispersion.
Fit with the empowering level. Through the leader’s stimulation of sociability and solidarity and the following move towards the communal culture, group members can feel calmer about working in safe settings, inspired by the backing of the other group members and empowered to pursue individual as well as organisational goals.
Fit with the enacting level. It is up to the leader of the virtual organisation to enact the cultural setting, which is found more beneficial to reach the outlined goals. Most
important is not that the organisational settles into a communal culture; most important is that the organisational members can find reasonableness in the dispositions of their employer.
Hypothesis 4: The virtual leader supports events to ground social structures and