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The COVID-19 pandemic caused the largest education system disruption in history, resulting in many districts abruptly, and often ineptly, implementing remote learning to maintain the continuity of instruction. The majority of educational leaders were unprepared for working and delivering instruction in virtual environments. Research indicates that few educational leadership programs provide preparation for leading in virtual learning environments but the COVID crisis made clear that it is imperative for all school leaders have an understanding of virtual leadership. The purpose of this study was to develop an understanding of the competencies required for virtual school leadership as they relate to the Professional Standards for Educational Leaders(P-SEL). Interviews were conducted with 28 virtual leaders using a semi-structured interview protocol. Results indicated that while the P-SEL Standards were categorically aligned to their work, there were distinctive differences in the ways in which virtual school leaders engaged their work across various leadership domains that required unique competencies. These findings are important to our understanding of how to better prepare educational leaders to maintain the effective continuity of instruction in future emergencies as well as to continue to implement and improve upon promising practices that developed during remote instruction.

The inevitable digitalization of workplaces in the present era, generally as a result of technological developments, has caused a paradigm shift, along with new innovative business models and business behaviors, which has required leaders to possess certain digital skills for sustainable corporate performance. Hence, studies on digital leadership have attracted the attention of academics and practitioners worldwide, with many studies having been conducted on the topic. However, a comprehensive analysis of the intellectual architecture, knowledge structure, and thematic evolution of the digital leadership field of research using science mapping tools has yet to be conducted. The current study, therefore, aimed at reviewing the intellectual structure and evolution of the digital leadership field through a bibliometric and science-mapping analysis. This study used digital leadership as an umbrella term comprising leadership styles such as e-leadership, virtual leadership, technology leadership, and leadership 4.0, which have similar meanings and can be used interchangeably. With this purpose, bibliometric performance and science mapping analysis was performed on articles related to the research field that were retrieved from the Scopus database using SciMAT software (version 1.1.04). The results of the study revealed that the scope of digital leadership research is gradually expanding and diversifying and that publication output is increasing steadily. In addition, period-based analysis showed that the technology management theme during the first period, the virtual teams and technology themes during the second period, and the COVID-19, virtual reality, and digital technologies themes during the third period emerged as the motor themes and formed the focus of research in this field. Thematic evolution analysis showed that virtual leadership during the first and second periods, virtual teams during the second period, e-leadership and technology during the second and third periods, and digital leadership, COVID-19, and virtual reality during the third period, along with technology leadership in all three periods were all noteworthy as well-developed research themes. These findings enable a better understanding of the research field of digital leadership and provide a reference for future research by revealing the conceptual structure and thematic evolution of the digital leadership knowledge base.

Purpose This study aims to explore virtual leadership work within educational settings in the light of social disruption. In 2020, a global pandemic changed the way we work. For school leaders, that involved running a virtual school overnight. Although there is a stream of research that explores leadership in solely virtual communities, there is a gap in the literature regarding practices that transition from analog to virtual practices and the changes in leadership in those types of work practices. Design/methodology/approach The data gathering method constitutes a questionnaire to explore school leaders’ experiences of virtual work and virtual leadership in light of social disruption. One hundred and five Swedish school leaders answered the questionnaire covering both fixed and open questions. Findings The results show that school leaders’ general experiences of transition to virtual school have worked relatively well. We show how the work changes and shift the focus in the virtual workplace. Originality/value The author’s contributions include theorizing about leadership affordances in virtual schools and providing implications for practice. The authors summarize our main contribution in five affordances that characterize virtual leadership, including a focus on core activities, trust-based government, 1:1 communication with staff, structure and clarity and active outreach activities. The results could be interesting for understanding the radical digitalization of leadership in the digital workplace.

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.

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to investigate the leadership behaviors of managers of virtual teams (VTs), particularly in the areas of trust building and conflict management. This study aims to expand the research of VT performance by offering first-person accounts from VT leaders on the strategies implemented to drive VT performance. Design/methodology/approach - This study used a grounded theory approach to examine the leadership behaviors through in-depth interviews with eight field managers of VTs employed by different technology companies. Interview questions focused on trust-building and conflict management techniques. This structured qualitative study incorporates elements of narrative inquiry interwoven in the findings. Findings - Building a high-trust environment was found to be critical to VT performance. VT managers indicated that effective conflict resolution skills were also important. Research limitations/implications - Although the sample size is within the suggested range for a valid phenomenological study, the results may lack generalizability. Participants were limited to the technology industry; leaders of high-performing VTs in other industries could offer differing results. Practical implications - This study's contribution is the exploration and identification of innovative techniques that VT managers implemented to build trust and resolve conflict. A lack of holistic training programs for the VT leader is also considered along with suggestions for future research and implications for the VT managers. Originality/value - This study's contribution is the exploration and identification of innovative techniques that VT managers implemented that drive VT performance, particularly related to building high levels of trust and managing conflict effectively. Practices are suggested whereby both the VT leader and the organization take an active role in ensuring that the VT has the opportunity to perform optimally.

In a modern digital workplace, leaders must have the necessary skills to lead employees virtually. Despite its high practical and theoretical relevance, a consensus on crucial digital competencies for virtual leaders is lacking, hindering a systematic exploration of the leader’s role in facilitating technology use. In the present article, we propose a new concept and instrument to assess leader digital competence (LDC). After reviewing the literature, we establish three dimensions of LDC, centering around the leader’s ability and inclination to select, promote, and enable technology and digital media among their employees. We provide support for the scale's convergent, discriminant, criterion-related, and incremental validity using four independent samples (N1 = 156, N2 = 309, N3 = 201, N4 employee = 452, N4 leader = 93). Furthermore, results support the reliability and factor structure with the three proposed dimensions of the 10-item LDC scale. The findings demonstrate that the scale represents a psychometrically sound instrument, useful for further examining conditions for effectiveness in the virtual environment. Future research should aim to advance the understanding of antecedents and situational factors that influence the relevance of LDC and its impact on employee, team, and organizational outcomes.

Organizations in many different industries employ virtual teams in a variety of contexts, including research and development, customer support, software development, and product design. Many virtual teams are geographically and culturally dispersed in order to facilitate around-the-clock work and to allow the most qualified individuals to be assigned to a project team. As such dispersion increases, virtual teams tend to experience greater and more diverse conflict compared to co-located teams. Since the dynamics of virtual team leadership are not yet well understood, research that examines how team leaders alleviate threats to team cohesion and provide strategies for conflict resolution makes significant contributions to the literature. Our study uses a survey-based methodology to examine the perceptions of 159 virtual team members employed by a large U.S. telecommunications corporation and five Korean firms involved in construction, finance, business consulting, sales, and distribution. The study integrates the dynamic model of conflict in distributed teams with the behavioral complexity in leadership theory to investigate the roles that virtual team leaders must effectively employ to reduce various forms of virtual team conflict. Our findings indicate that communication technologies are effective in reducing task conflict; however, the team leader may also mitigate task conflict by assuming the role of monitor. Likewise, process conflict may be abated in the virtual team as the leader performs coordinator activities. An effective virtual team leader exhibits specific roles to manage different types of conflict and the leader's response to conflict plays an important part in virtual team success. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

This study examines how managers in Saudi Arabia reconfigure leadership for remote and hybrid teams in a high power-distance, collectivist setting shaped by Vision 2030. Using purposive and network sampling, twenty-three semi-structured interviews with mid-level managers across multiple sectors were analyzed via reflexive thematic analysis with iterative coding and constant comparison. The findings show three patterns: effective virtual leadership rests on cadence and predictability rather than visibility; psychological safety grows from fair-process and clear availability norms; and inclusion is engineered to fit hierarchy through culturally intelligent choices of tone, channel, and timing. Leadership also serves as the vehicle for enacting sustainable HRM, as managers design equitable workloads, humane schedules, and tangible supports aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals. The study advances international HRM by specifying how transformational and distributed leadership travel beyond Western settings and by reframing cultural intelligence as everyday design rather than a leader trait. Practically, it offers a ‘trust-by-design’ model—codified through cadence charters, learning-oriented reviews, and inclusive meeting routines—in place of surveillance.

PurposeThe daunting task of managing knowledge workers virtually has not always yielded positive results. This empirical work discusses the impact of Virtual Leadership on Organizational Citizenship Behavior. The study investigated how Psychological Contract Violation moderates the relationship between Virtual Leadership and Organizational Citizenship Behavior.Design/methodology/approachData was collected from 392 IT engineers working in software companies in India. The cross-sectional data was analyzed using Warp-PLS software, IBM SPSS and IBM Amos.FindingsThe results support the proposition that virtual leadership is negatively associated with Organizational citizenship behavior, at sub-dimension levels except obedience. The moderating role of psychological contract violation is also established by the results.Practical implicationsVirtual leaders should demonstrate collaborative behaviors to generate organizational citizenship behavior among team members. Leaders should be imparted training to enable them to adapt themselves to virtual environment. This study highlights the paradoxical nature of virtual leadership and opens the possibilities for future research.Originality/valueThe study is one of the first to report a negative association between Virtual leadership and Organization citizenship behavior. There is uniqueness in the use of the “Contingency theory of leadership” to explain the difficulties faced while managing a virtual team.

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to discover the components of virtual leadership in universities and higher education institutions during Covid-19 pandemic.Design/methodology/approachThis research uses the qualitative research design, and semi-structured interviews with senior leaders were conducted with non-random purposeful and snowball sampling methods. Also, grounded theory was used for analyzing, coding and classifying the data.FindingsAfter analyzing data, five main components influencing virtual leadership including leader's personality traits, followers' characteristics, technological, environmental and organizational components were identified.Research limitations/implicationsAs leadership, particularly virtual leadership, highly depends on context such as the level of technology in that certain region, the results cannot be generalized to other sectors or countries.Originality/valueThe research advances leadership development theory by highlighting the main components of virtual leadership in educational sector as a comprehensive perspective and complement the other aspects of virtual leadership such as consequences and challenges investigated by other studies.