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Title: Knowledge sharing and relational processes in global, virtual teams – A qualitative casestudy in a global organisation Level: Thesis for master’s degree in international business administration & management Authors: Sofia Martinsson Broström & Nathalie Skoglund Supervisor: Carina Holmgren Date: June 2, 2023 Aim: The aim of this study is to explore the opportunities and challenges in knowledge sharing in virtual global teams. Method: In this case study, a qualitative method has been applied using semi-structured interviews. The study is based on an abductive approach and has been analysed thematically. Results and conclusions: The results of the study show that feedback and inclusion are aspects that emerge as central, and that this is also where focus is needed. Recommendations based on this study are focused on relationship-building processes, where mainly inclusion and openness need to be lifted. Contribution: The theoretical contribution this study conveys is of a strengthening nature. This means that the results of the study do not clearly differ from previous research and that this study makes a strengthening contribution in relation to others research in the field. The practical contribution this study makes can help other organisations that do not have the same experience of the global, virtual work environment; and to see the case study as a guide, where many good aspects are lifted from previous research, and which are connected to the current case.

Virtual work environments (VWEs) have been used in the private sector for more than a decade, but the United States Marine Corps (USMC), as a whole, has not yet taken advantage of associated benefits. The USMC construct parallels the bureaucratic organizational culture and uses an antiquated information technology (IT) infrastructure. During an effort to upgrade the Marine Corps Combat Development Command's infrastructure to a VWE, the change-agent noticed an immediate resistance towards the VWE and new work methodology. The problem identified for investigation was to discover why a bureaucratic organizational culture, matured through IT savvy and cognitively adept personnel, resists the VWE and new work methodology introduced by the evolution of IT. The explanatory, single case study documented the resistance towards the VWE and new work methodology and recommended a solution to the problem. Due to a noticeable resistance geared towards the adoption of the VWE, the case study and pre-trial preparation began in Fall, 2009 and the data-collection period occurred in the Spring of 2010. The preparation phase entailed developing extensive instruments that burrowed into the participants' technical expertise and willingness to accept change on an individual level. The instruments were validated by an expert panel from the following disciplines: knowledge management, information technology, and psychology, as part of the groundwork. Analysis of the data showed resistance towards the VWE, both collectively as a group and on the individual level. The final report articulates that the data proves the study successfully accomplished the goal. Resistance was found at the user level in the work environment. It stemmed from several key areas: lack of user input, lack of training, user ignorance, and absence of a vision statement. Leadership should review the implementation methodology and decide upon a new course of action. Training in the use of the VWE at entry and advanced levels should be offered to newcomers and be available on a continuous basis. Future change agents must examine the outcomes of similar, previous work in order to gain a better understanding of what makes an initiative fail or succeed.

The Covid-19 global pandemic has challenged traditional models of leadership and change management. In a few months, organisations were forced to transform into working virtually, either partially or wholly. In this context, leadership practices have been crucial to the survival of organisations and their capability to manage that change with minimum interruption and constant productivity. Leadership is a complex social and organisational phenomenon, and this study takes on the novel Leadership-as-practice perspective that understands leadership as an emerging and unfolding process through daily experience and offers an alternative to restrictive traditional competency models. In the era of communications technology, traditional leadership models, remote working, and change management have already been intensively studied. However, little research in the IT management area combines those three topics in the context of a crisis, and leaders were left without clear and researchbased references to guide their efforts during this pandemic. Thus, this study seeks to close that research gap and identify which practices leaders used to strategically and effectively leverage virtual teams to sustain productivity and keep business operational during a global crisis. This study was conducted with a case study research strategy, and data were collected from eleven semistructured interviews with leaders from different levels and organisations across Europe and North America. The chosen data analysis method was grounded theory to ensure findings were grounded in data, along with thematic analysis and constant comparative analysis. Results revealed three categories of practices were central to managing the change to virtual collaboration during the Covid-19 pandemic: Intentional and frequent communications, adaptability, and people-centric focus. Previous research indicates these were not common to other crises, and their absence might have led to destructive leadership behaviours during the pandemic context. These results are coherent with the recent rise of the transformational leadership current and its emphasis on human values in business contexts. From a research perspective, this study fills the gap in extant research and contributes to the growing body of literature using the Leadership-as-practice perspective. From a business perspective, these practices offer leaders a simple framework to guide their change efforts and might imply a need to rethink the manager-team member relationship and responsibilities. Similarly, they might point towards a greater responsibility for organisations to address remote working and secure employee well-being during crises.

Background: The traditionally homogeneous work environment, historically associated with physical locations such as offices and buildings, has undergone significant changes in recent years. This change has been driven by technological innovation, cultural development and external challenges, an accelerator in this process was the global spread of covid-19, which radicalized the traditional way of working. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to create a deeper understanding of how leadership has been affected in step with work environment changes. A delimitation has been made towards an explicit work environment, the hybrid environment.  Methodology: Through a combination of literature review and qualitative data collection methods such as interviews, has this study investigated how leadership practices have changed and adapted to the hybrid work environment in symbiosis with what challenges and adaptations, have developed.  Result: The results show that leaders must now be more empathetic, communicative, and consultative than before. They also need to possess a combination of emotional and technical skills to effectively navigate the complexity that the combined work environment entails. In addition, the importance of being able to manage and understand team dynamics and the emotional needs of individuals has become more prominent. Conclusion: Today's leaders, which are operating in hybrid work environments, face the challenging task of balancing technical competence along with human dynamics. To be effective, these leaders must be agile, forward-thinking and tech savvy. Success lies in their ability to combine innovative methods with a deep understanding of human interaction, which is critical to their effectiveness in this rapidly changing work environment.

Enabled by advanced information technologies, the distributed work environment has become a choice of organizations. When employees and supervisors work in geographically separate locations, management challenges emerge. Performance improvement may become an issue. Performance may be improved by identifying, studying, and improving factors that affect work performance. Two factors–feedback and goal setting–were chosen for this study because of the strong evidence of the effects of these components. Positive effects of feedback and goal setting are commonly accepted in the literature concerning the traditional work environment. This study focused only on knowledge work because most work in the distributed work environment may be knowledge work. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of feedback and goal setting on knowledge work performance in the distributed work environment. A laboratory experiment was conducted using 36 student subjects. The experimental design was a 3 X 2 factorial design consisting of three levels of feedback (i.e., no feedback, task feedback, and task feedback with comparisons with others) and two levels of goal setting (i.e., no goal setting and goal setting). Subjects were randomly assigned to various combinations of these two variables. The evidence did not outright support the claim that feedback and goal setting improve task performance; task performance of the subjects was improved only under certain conditions. Task feedback did not improve task performance because of its added pressure, especially in the presence of goals. Task performance was higher for the subjects who received both task feedback and information about others’ performance than for the subjects who received task feedback only. Overall, feedback was not found to improve task performance. The study did not support the hypothesis that specific and difficult goals improve task performance. The added pressure of having difficult goals was found to have demotivating effects. The notion that the co-presence of feedback and goals is necessary to improve task performance was not supported because of the combined pressure that both components created. The subjects who had feedback and/or goals did not perform better than those who had neither feedback nor goals. / Ph. D.

Virtual team leaders in health care must have the right resources available to help them effectively perform their jobs. Better performance from the leader may lead to greater employee satisfaction. The problem addressed by this study was the impact of leadership style on employee satisfaction of virtual nurses. The purpose of this quantitative correlational study was to investigate the relationship between the leadership styles of virtual nursing environment leaders as perceived by virtual employee nurses and the nurses' satisfaction as measured by the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire-short form. Building on the theoretical foundation of Bass's 1990 work, this study examined the relationship between full range leadership and three measures linked to team success, work effort, perceived leader effectiveness, and employee satisfaction, for virtual teams. Populations came from national organizations that hire registered nurses to work remotely. The sampling strategy was a nonprobability convenience sample of 131 registered nurses. Data analysis included both descriptive and inferential statistics. Correlations were used to predict the relationship of the dependent and independent variables. There were strong positive correlations with transformational leadership and transactional leadership contingent reward with employee satisfaction, while passive/avoidant leadership correlations were negative with employee satisfaction. The potential significance of this study is a better understanding of how leadership in a virtual nursing environment can affect employee satisfaction, which can have a positive effect on job performance and employee retention, potentially leading to improved health care services and reduced health care costs.

Background: Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the associated restrictions and recommendations has forced a transition into a more digital and virtual environment. Thus, businesses have faced numerous challenges regarding both leading and working at a distance. Leading to an increased need for digital skills and new ways of working, as has been advocated by successful international consulting firms. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to develop the research about distance leadership, leadership in virtual and digital contexts, and leadership in crisis. Thus, the aim was to investigate and compare team leadership, such as it was before the recommendation and restrictions caused by COVID-19, with the present. Research question: How has the forced digital transformation affected the team leadership from the perspective of both leaders and employees? Methodology: A case study was conducted in which semi-structured interviews, a collection of background information and data from an internal personnel survey was used to gather in-depth information. Conclusion: The results from the case study indicated three main challenges: internal communication, the need for combined and adaptable leadership, and the observed outcomes from the relation-oriented and task-oriented behaviors.

The introduction of the virtual work environment has resulted in the creation of a new work structure where interaction between employees and leaders occurs through technological innovations such as teleconferencing, emails, and text messages. The absence of physical workspace has also created a diverse work environment with people from various cultural backgrounds working together as virtual teams. Existing studies have been conducted on leadership styles and culture in the traditional work environment, but few empirical studies have been conducted on leadership styles and culture in the virtual work environment. The purpose of this quantitative, nonexperimental survey study was to identify the relationship between cultural backgrounds and leadership styles in the virtual work environment. The data were collected by an online survey using the Bass and Avolio multifactor leadership questionnaire and Hofstede's cultural value survey module from a random sample of 303 participants with leadership roles in virtual work environments. Pearson correlation analysis was used to test the relationship between the dependent variables, transactional and transformational leadership styles, with the independent variables, being power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism, and masculinity. The results of the study showed a negative correlation between the transformational and transactional leadership styles for individualism and uncertainty avoidance. There were no correlations between femininity and power distance for the transformational and transactional leadership styles. The study contributes to social change by confirming that cultural backgrounds can impact the effectiveness of the transactional and transformational leadership styles, regardless of the work environment.

Organisationsvärlden har under flera år stått inför utmaningen att anpassa sig efter den ökade digitaliseringen som sker i samhället, men när COVID-19 pandemin började sprida sig i världen i början av år 2020 fick många oförberedda företag ändra sina rutiner drastiskt. Studien syftar till att undersöka om och hur ledarskapssrollerna i kreativa team förändras av ett skifte från fysisk till virtuell arbetsmiljö. För att kunna besvara studiens frågeställning har en kvalitativ metod i form av fysiska intervjuer, intervjuer via videosamtal samt intervjuer via mejl använts. Totalt medverkade 12 respondenter på två olika företag, varav fyra av respondenterna hade olika ledarbefattningar och resterande var medarbetare med kreativa roller. Den insamlade datan har transkriberats och analyserats med hjälp av en innehållsanalys. Denna innehållsanalys resulterade i sex olika kategorier; ledarskap, kommunikation, gruppdynamik, motivation, produktivitet och kreativitet. Resultatet visade att ledarna på flera sätt anpassat sina ledarskapsroller efter skiftet från en fysisk till en virtuell arbetsmiljö men även att medarbetarna behövt anpassa sig på olika sätt. Ett virtuellt ledarskap kräver enligt studien mer struktur, tydlighet och medvetenhet än ett fysiskt ledarskap, samtidigt som medarbetarna också fått ett ökat ansvar och självledarskap. Medarbetarna kunde exempelvis i högre grad ses själva planera och överse det dagliga arbetet, samt ta mer egna initiativ till kommunikation och problemlösning. / For many years, organizations have tried to adapt to the increasing digitalization in the world. However, when the COVID-19 pandemic began to spread around the world in the beginning of 2020, many unprepared companies had to change their routines drastically. The purpose of this study is to examine whether and how leadership roles in creative teams are affected by a shift from a physical to a virtual work environment. In order to answer the research question a qualitative method with physical interviews, video interviews and interviews through email has been used. A total of 12 respondents participated from two different companies. Four of the respondents had management positions and the remaining were co-workers with creative roles. The collected data has been transcribed and analyzed using a content analysis method. This content analysis method resulted in six different categories; leadership, communication, group dynamics, motivation, productivity and creativity. The findings suggest that the leaders have adapted their leadership roles in several different ways since the shift from a physical to a virtual workplace, and that the co-workers’ roles also have been affected. Based on the results, a virtual leadership seems to require more structure, explicitness and awareness than a physical leadership. The co-workers were also given more responsibility and an increased self- leadership. They planned and reviewed their own daily work, as well as took more initiative when it came to communication and problem solving.