Technological development has made it possible to perform virtual work, and the use of virtual work increased in a stunning pace as the world was hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.   We have conducted a single-case study with an inductive design where eight managers in a distribution center delivered valuable insights and their perceptions of the sudden transition to a virtual work environment.   Our findings discovered a change in work relations between leaders and followers, and further discovered a set of new challenges that managers have had to face after this sudden transition to virtual leadership.

Title Communication challenges perceived by leaders of different sized virtual teams, and how they are managed: Experiences from leaders within Swedish organizations Authors Daniella Larsson & Matilda Wahlgren Level Master thesis, 30 credits Key words Virtual teams, Communication challenges, Virtual leadership Background The recent years’ rapid technological development has made it possible to communicate solely through technological channels, and thus enabled organizations to implement virtual teams into their businesses. Virtual teams are allowing organizations to have the most qualified members in their teams, regardless of their geographical location. New ways of working entails for new challenges, not least regarding communication. Awareness of these challenges, and how they can be managed, provide the prerequisites to succeed with the virtual leadership. Research Questions Which communication challenges do leaders, of different sized virtual teams within Swedish organizations, perceive? How do the leaders manage the perceived communication challenges? Purpose The purpose of this study is to describe and understand leaders' perception and management of communication challenges in leading different sized virtual teams within Swedish organizations. Further, the aim is to broaden the academic field of virtual teams by adding valuable contributions to the scarce research. This, by suggesting a developed theoretical framework, based on the experiences from leaders within Swedish organizations. Method The study follows a qualitative research method and abductive approach. Semi-structured interviews with twelve leaders of different sized virtual teams were executed. The chosen organizations are of various industries to retain generalizability. Frame of Reference Four theoretical blocks constitute the frame of reference. The first block is leadership, which includes e-leadership and competencies. The second block is group development theories, with insights from two different approaches. The third grouping, communication, involves theories both regarding conventional and virtual teams. The fourth and final provides insights regarding trust. Findings The findings of this study show that all virtual leaders perceive communication challenges within their leadership. The identified challenges are teambuilding and relationship creation, miscommunication, inclusion, performance follow-ups, communication overload and technology. The findings also reveal that the identified challenges are managed in different ways. Further, some deviances were found, regarding how the leaders perceive and manage these communication challenges, depending on the team’s size.

Globalization and fast developing technology are allowing organizations to spread their operations across the world. While this is often cost effective and increases companies’ competitiveness, a new challenge for leadership has arisen as people and teams are becoming geographically dispersed. Leaders and followers are relying more heavily on computer-mediated communication instead of traditional face-to-face interaction. The aim of this thesis is to gain a deeper understanding of leadership in geographically dispersed teams. As communication is occurring primarily through virtual channels, the purpose is to study the effect this phenomenon has on the leader’s role and how followers experience virtual leadership. This thesis also outlines the impact of leadership in virtual teams; how to create and maintain team spirit, how to establish trust, and how to ensure team effectiveness. Additionally, this study examines the main challenges and opportunities  in virtual leadership, what competencies are required for virtual leaders, and how important communication is in the concept of virtual leadership. Data for this study was collected from ten various professionals, including both leaders' and followers', by conducting qualitative semi-structured interviews with each individual. The findings of the empirical research show that there is a relatively optimistic attitude towards virtual leadership. However, there are certainly critical challenges when it comes to relationship building, team cohesion, and communication. There is a significant need for raising awareness of virtual leadership, as it is becoming more the norm than the exception in the modern business world.

This Master thesis is an exploratory study that had the initial aim to research leadership in distributed teams, but, which ended up changing the focus as a result of unexpected findings. Therefore, the study refocused on collaboration in distributed teams with the purpose to explore the work environment of distributed teams from a collaborative perspective, with the aim of trying to develop an in‐depth understanding of the factors that contribute and challenge the cohesion in these teams. Furthermore, our aim was to present our findings in a model, which would describe the collaborative environment in distributed teams. Our research design was a single case study with embedded cases, overall 13 interviews were conducted representing leaders and members of hybrid distributed teams, which gave rich and descriptive data of their collaborative environment. Our empirical findings showed that structure has a significant impact on collaboration. This led to another finding, which states that management skills are more relevant than leadership skills in the virtual context. Furthermore, we could also identify several challenges, which were not explicitly approached in previous literature. Limitations/Implications: Our research is limited to a single case study, therefore future investigations including several cases or companies from different industries would be advised to strengthen the findings. Our research project contributes to the existing literature, by extending the research field of collaboration in distributed teams, while also having implications for companies, which have employees across the world and thus, consider developing or implementing this specific work unit.

As the technology develops, the communication infrastructure continues to innovate and increase competitiveness. For companies in a country such as Brazil, communicating virtually may be very beneficial in order to become more efficient, as well as more global. Due to today’s technological development and globalization, virtual teamwork has increased. For virtual teamwork to be successful, the importance of virtual leadership needs to be addressed by the organizations. Thus, the purpose of this study is to investigate leadership in a virtual context with focus on its effect on teamwork in culturally diverse teams. Furthermore, due to its emerging market and economic relevance, this study will examine virtual leaders of multinational companies in Brazil. From our dialogues we found that there is a lack of technological infrastructure, education, and positive attitude for virtual communication and virtual leadership within multinational companies in Brazil. Brazil as a country, as well as companies in Brazil, needs to provide opportunities and possibilities for excellent virtual communication and leadership. For instance, facetual communication and attication are important concepts on the way for companies of becoming virtualized.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Psychology / Patrick A. Knight / Today the geographic distance between workers is increasing. The purpose of this study was to investigate the distributed work environment by specifically focusing on leader behavior and its impact on subordinate outcomes. This study asked if the traditional core set of leadership behaviors is effective in distributed work environments, and how those behaviors impact employee outcomes such as commitment and satisfaction with supervision. Several fundamental and explored questions included: Do essential management behaviors such as consideration and initiating structure materialize differently in face-to-face versus remote situations, what type of leadership will have the most positive impact on employee's perceptions of satisfaction with supervision and organizational commitment, and does this differ according to the amount of face time between the manager and employee? Correlational data results did not support the hypotheses that face to face interaction scores were positively correlated with affective commitment, or satisfaction with supervision. Face to face interaction was not negatively correlated with continuance commitment. Non-remote employees reported significantly higher levels of satisfaction with supervision than remote employees. There was a significant difference between remote and non remote employees with non remote employees reporting higher levels of career advancement than remote employees. There was a stronger relationship between initiating structure and satisfaction with supervision when spatial distance was high. It appears that spatial distance acted as an enhancer. Two scales, company support for remote management and remote management specific behaviors, were analyzed to obtain preliminary data for future research.

Globalization and technological developments have made it possible to engage in virtual work modes. Globalization also enabled an enormous spread of the ongoing pandemic of covid-19. A situation that forced previously co-located teams to become virtual teams. This required an adaption for leaders to lead in an environment that differs vastly from traditional ones.We conducted a multiple case study with an abductive approach and qualitative method in which 10 semi-structured interviews were held with practitioners across 3 business cases that were experiencing a transition into a virtual work mode.The findings suggest that the work relations between leaders and followers change in several ways when previously co-located teams become virtual teams. This entails new challenges and a shift in the use of leadership styles as well as follower behavior.

Technological developments have brought at the forefront the virtual communication in the business world. In our day and age it is difficult to find teams in organizations that do not rely in long distance communication even partially. Leaders bear the responsibility to secure quick and smooth transition of information among the members of their teams as well as to foster an environment that promotes trust and fuels motivation. We conducted this exploratory case study using the abductive approach and the qualitative method. Our aim was to gain a better understanding on how the leaders perceive trust and motivation in a virtual communication setting. Therefore, we send out questionnaires to leaders that volunteered to participate in our study and we adopted the pragmatist philosophy in an attempt to provide valuable insights and practical recommendations to leaders that are managing teams in an electronic environment. The results of our study suggest that leaders perceive the long distance communication mediated through technology to be something positive to the success of their teams as they consider it to actually increase efficiency, provide a more straightforward style of communication that enables their followers to take on more responsibility for the results of their work as well as an increase in productivity.

Virtual working in organisations is becoming more popular with the regular developments oftechnology and swift globalization. In this virtual environment, the teams working dispersed arebetter work-life balance, feeling less stress while enjoying flexible working times. However, onthe other hand, working at a distance leaves the leaders a set of unique challenges. Managingteams remotely without daily face-to-face interactions will also influence their behaviours orunderstandings towards the context of virtual leadership, such as leadership styles, motivation oradoption of communication technology and culture. Therefore, leaders will also focus oncultivating their virtual interactions with employees, tending to excel at remote leadership. In this research, under the research philosophy of pragmatism, we adopted a qualitative methodto conduct a descriptive case study, using an abductive method. Our purpose is to understand andidentify the leadership perception in virtual teams regarding the following factors: Leadershipstyles, motivation, technology and culture. Moreover, as the environment is dynamic, thebenefits and difficulties to lead virtual teams exist everywhere. Therefore, the paper also studiesleaders’ perception of these elements when facing various opportunities and challenges in thedigital world. Hence, we designed a questionnaire to interview six leaders to gain their practicalinsights and valuable opinions, providing the virtual leaders with some professionalrecommendations when leading in the virtual context. Our results in the study suggest that the leaders perceive that in order to lead virtual teamssuccessfully, the leaders need to be aware and vigilant, as it is more challenging than leadingco-located traditional teams. The leadership styles should depend upon the task at hand andwould be influenced by the leader’s characteristics; they believe the most important thing invirtual teams is communication technology and it is a leader’s responsibility to select the rightone keeping the requirements in view. About motivation, majority leaders believe that it shouldbe intrinsic, they also discuss the various ways they use to motivate their teams. Moreover, aboutCultural elements, they claim that a leader should be accepting and promoting harmony inmulticultural teams, and stress the importance of cultural training and sensitivity.

The purpose of this study is to contribute to the current field of virtual leadership and virtual teams. This study aims to examine the effects on leadership, the relation between the leader and the team member, and the collaboration as a consequence of a rapid virtual transition. This qualitative research was conducted with an inductive approach through a    case study. Primary data was collected through three semi-structured interviews with team leaders from different departments and nine semi-structured interviews with their respective team members. The primary data was analyzed in a thematic way and had support from a theoretical model conducted from secondary sources. This study signifies the importance of establishing relationships, trust and effective communication within teams in virtual environments and recognizes how these aspects are essential for leaders when guiding a team through a rapid virtual transition. Being a leader under the investigated condition suggests individualized leadership as beneficial to maintain stability and trust through the reorganization process. Managerial attitudes are confirmed as influential on team performance through a transition and the transformational leadership theory is argued to be successful when managing a change process based on the studied case.