Role of ICTs in the Organization – the Impact of E-leadership in Theories and Practices

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Topic: Role of ICTs in the Organization – the Impact of E-leadership in Theories and Practices

Lecturer’s Name: Anne Goulding

Date: 3rd November, 2016

Word Count: 1611

Abstract

E-leadership, also known as virtual leadership within the virtual team, which it has been around for about a decade. How to take advantages of modern technology apply to leadership practices is the critical part of e-leadership performance. This paper will examine the impact of e-leadership in theories and practices within the organization.

Introduction

This seminar paper report will briefly discuss the impact of e-leadership in theories and practices within the organization. The leadership is defined as “An influence process affecting the perception of events by those who follow the leader, the choice of group objectives, the organization chosen to achieve these objectives, maintaining cooperative relationships within the work team, and the involvement of persons from outside the group and the organization, in terms of support and cooperation.” (Leduc, Guilbert & Vallery, 2015). E-leadership, on the other hand, the leadership is perform with electronic way.

Several studies (Walvoord et al., 2008; Shrestha, 2015; Dinh et al., 2014; Avolio et al., 2014; Meuser et al., 2016; Celik & Kaygusuz, 2015; ElKhouly et al, 2014; Fan et al., 2014; Chang & Lee, 2013; Nograšek & Vintar, 2014) note that these leadership could divided into three phases to discuss the e-leadership within the team:

  • The theories of e-leadership – different leadership theories could lead to different results;
  • Principles of e-leadership – the leader should following e-leadership principles when they perform leadership practices within the team;
  • Styles and practices of e-leadership – different styles of leadership could lead to different performance of team.

Discussion

Theories of e-leadership

Meuser, Gardner, Dinh, Hu, Liden & Lord (2016) indicated that there has six different leadership theories based on reviewed articles, which includes charismatic leadership, transformational leadership, strategic leadership, leadership and diversity, participative/shared leadership, and trait approaches to leadership. In addition, Avolio, Sosik, Kahai & Baker (2014) also indicated that locus and mechanisms are two fundamental aspects of leadership, which helps to identified five types of locus leadership (leader, follower, leader-follower dyad, collective, and context) and four types of mechanisms leadership (traits, behaviours, cognition, and affect). The results shows that the organization should consider implement total leadership system, which the leadership is performed across all possible organization levels based on Advanced Information Technology (AIT).

Sahay & Baul (2016) argued that the most important part of leadership theories is quality between leaders and followers, which there have fives skills could make people be a better follower as well as a better leader – awareness, diplomacy, courage, collaboration, and critical thinking. Moreover, Slykhuis & Lee (2016) indicate that the Technological and Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) and the Twenty-first Century Learning Design (21CLD) framework could be used to promote e-leadership within the workshop. TPACK could help leader to teaching content to their team members, where the technical tool could help them teaching. On the other hand, 21CLD could help leader to develop their own teaching style based on provided rubric, which include technical tools and methods that leader want to use during teaching phase.

Principles of e-leadership

What principles for leaders should followed when perform their leadership within the team? Walvoord, Redden, Elliott & Coovert (2008) developed a “guiding principles for e-leadership communication (GP)”, which includes individual differences, perception of cues, and functions appropriateness. This GP could help leaders to build a better virtual team in order to gain benefits from e-leadership practices. Cowan (2014) also shows that eight e-leadership guiding principles could help further research study, which include (1) e-leadership have to build based on a trusting relationship between team members; (2) virtual team member must have to feel a sense of leadership when leader perform e-leadership within a team; (3) leaders have to have some social-emotional aspects within the team; (4) leaders should promote a “healthy” team based on interaction; (5) leaders should create a communication norms and show their team member how to use it; (6) leaders only using contextual information to communicate with their team members; (7) leaders should using technology tools to solve any possible issues within the virtual team; and (8) leaders must know how to handle cultural issues between team members. Once leaders followed this eight principles, they could build a high performance virtual team.

E-leadership styles & practices

Fan, Chen, Wang & Chen (2014) also shows that one of disadvantages of virtual team leadership is leader could not see his/her team member body language and their activities. As a result, leader’s motivating language is become a critical part of how to make virtual team effective. Sahay & Baul (2016) shows that virtual leadership is another format of e-leadership, which present a way of how to manage virtual workforce. They also shows that leadership style could seem as a combination of leader’s behaviours, skills and traits, which it is the way when leader communicate with their team members. Chang & Lee (2013) shows that two leadership styles – transformational leadership and transactional leadership, which different leadership style could potentially influence the project performance. The study results shows that the transformational leadership is better than transactional leadership, because transformational leaders are usually discuss with their followers and provide encourage messages for their team members.

Sahay & Baul (2016) indicated that two important features of leadership could lead to organization success, which is suitable and accountable. Because the styles of leadership could impact the performance of organization, which means that effective leader could achieve a better results, in other words, it have better performance compared to other non-effective leaders. However, as a leader, how to perform the best leadership in order to achieve the best performance is the main problem of leader want to be solved during the leadership practices. Sahay & Baul (2016) indicated that virtual leader should have following characters to perform as a team leader, such as motivation, coordination, develop team members and future team leaders. Leadership is the most important factor that for the success of organization, which it could identified through several ways of leading types, such as excellence management, spiritual leadership, value leadership, scientific management and trust leadership. There is no doubt that leadership could affect the success of the organization. Shrestha (2015) shows that there have seven styles of leadership (transformational, authentic, participative, strategic, task-oriented, supportive, and situational) could applied to the organization based on the study of Nepal police station. This study shows that Nepal police station is more looking for adopt transformational leadership compared with other styles of leadership, and the reason is because transformational leadership could encourages subordinates to accomplish more difficult goals, solve problems from a new and diverse perspective, and promote employee self-development. In addition, Fan, Chen, Wang & Chen (2014) shows that leader’s motivating language and feedback could help team achieve a better performance, which leader send “direction-giving” e-mail could potential help team member have more creative ideas.

Avolio, Sosik, Kahai & Baker (2014) shows that Advanced Information Technology (AIT) could possible transform how leader could organize leadership within the organization by using AIT. They also argued that using Adaptive Structuration Theory (AST) to study Advanced Information Technology (AIT) could possible influence leadership. On the other hand, Adaptive Structuration Theory (AST) was used to study how people using AIT within their workplace. The article founds that a technology combine tools, techniques, and knowledge to perform participation activities within the organization. In addition, such technology could help leader to monitor and control information. On the other hand, Fan, Chen, Wang & Chen (2014) indicated that the performance of virtual team is also affect by how to use collaboration tools, which the factors include what kind of online collaboration tool experience that team member prior have, what kind of types of task, what rewarding system that the team used, and what cultural background that team member have. Avolio, Kahai & Dodge (2001) also shows that virtual team member using Advanced Information Technology (AIT) to communicate each other, and leadership might be shared via AIT.

Cowan (2014) indicated that nursing leadership is one of example how e-leadership performed within health care organization. ElKhouly, Ossman, Selim & Zaghloul (2014) shows an example of the Egyptian government performed e-leadership practices across three departments – Information Decision Support Center (IDSC), Ministry of Communication and Information Technology (MCIT) and Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA). The results shows that technology is play a significant role within the organization, which it could impact how leadership performed. They concluded that in order to perform successful e-leadership practice, leaders must be able to (a) maintain trust between team members by using proper ICT; (b) effectively manage the software project life cycle; (c) effectively manage the virtual team; and (d) make virtual team both visible at inside and outside. Finally, Avolio, Walumbwa & Weber (2009) indicated that the most common problems/challenges happened within the virtual team is when leader distribute work to their team members in different time zones, and when ICT infrastructures fails. They also shows that compared with traditional leadership models, the e-leadership model is build based on non-face-to-face interactions, which technology is become a the most important factor within the e-leadership. The fundamental issues should be addressed how technology could transfer the role of traditional leadership to individual level within the e-leadership, especially, how to address leadership style and culture issues in the organization.

Conclusions

Overall, transformational leadership is probably the best style for the virtual leadership practices, because transformational leader will focus on the values, ideals, morals and needs of the followers rather than his/herself, and the most important is this kind of leadership is focus on the innovation process, as a result, it could produce more creative product and have better performance. However, there is no standard or best leadership style could suit all circumstances within the team. To choose the best leadership style is based on the needs and conditions of the organization.

Recommendations

For e-leadership recommendations, the organization or leader should focus on following points:

  • Monitoring current and future market, and they adjust their leadership style;
  • Cooperate with universities (especially business school) to develop new approach to delivery e-leadership;
  • Encourage employers to use e-leadership programme in order to practices their leadership skills.

References

Avolio, B. J., Kahai, S., & Dodge, G. E. (2001). E-leadership: Implications for theory, research, and practice. The Leadership Quarterly, 11(4), 615-668.

Avolio, B., Walumbwa, F., & Weber, T. (2009). Leadership: Current theories, research, and future directions. Annual Review of Psychology, 60, 421-49.

Avolio, B. J., Sosik, J. J., Kahai, S. S., & Baker, B. (2014). E-leadership: Re-examining transformations in leadership source and transmission. The Leadership Quarterly, 25(1), 105-131. doi: 10.1016/j.leaqua.2013.11.003

Chang, W. L., & Lee, C. Y. (2013). Virtual team e‐leadership: The effects of leadership style and conflict management mode on the online learning performance of students in a business‐planning course. British Journal of Educational Technology, 44(6), 986-999. doi:10.1111/bjet.12037

Cowan, L. D. (2014). E-Leadership: Leading in a Virtual Environment-Guiding Principles for Nurse Leaders. Nursing Economics, 32(6), 312-322.

ElKhouly, S., Ossman, M., Selim, M., & Zaghloul, M. (2014). Impact of E-Leadership on Leadership Styles within the Egyptian Government Sector. In Competition Forum, 12(1). American Society for Competitiveness.

Fan, K. T., Chen, Y. H., Wang, C. W., & Chen, M. (2014). E-leadership effectiveness in virtual teams: motivating language perspective. Industrial Management & Data Systems, 114(3), 421-437.

Leduc, S., Guilbert, L., & Vallery, G. (2015). Impact of ICTs on leadership practices: Representations and actions. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 36(4), 380-395.

Meuser, J. D., Gardner, W. L., Dinh, J. E., Hu, J., Liden, R. C., & Lord, R. G. (2016). A Network Analysis of Leadership Theory: The Infancy of Integration. Journal of Management. doi: 10.1177/0149206316647099

Sahay, K., & Baul, U. (2016). Comparison of Traditional Leadership and E-Leadership: A Study of Organizational Effectiveness in Today’s Scenario. Purushartha: A Journal of Management Ethics and Spirituality, 7(2), 40-59.

Shrestha, T. M. (2015). Leadership Adaptation and Traits in Nepalese Police Forces. International Journal of Education & Literacy Studies, 3(3), 1. doi:10.7575/aiac.ijels.v.3n.3p.1

Slykhuis, D. A., & Lee, J. K. (2016). Using Two Frameworks to Promote E-Leadership and Teacher Development. In ICT in Education in Global Context (pp. 233-248). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

Walvoord, A. A., Redden, E. R., Elliott, L. R., & Coovert, M. D. (2008). Empowering followers in virtual teams: Guiding principles from theory and practice. Computers in Human Behavior, 24(5), 1884-1906. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2008.02.006

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