Social Sciences and Humanities Open (Jan 2022)
e-Leadership theory – A more than ever virtually connected world needs a virtually theorized leadership in a globally cross-cultural network space
Abstract
Existing research shows that there has not been adequate theorization of the relationship between organizational networks and cross-cultural leadership. What makes this integration important is need to make sense of the recent transition to the remote workspaces during Covid-19 and the limits of traditional understandings of leadership to catch up with changing organizational norms. The empirical research that this research draws upon is based on 18 international markets of an MNE that recently received ERP upgrades. Twenty-five respondents were selected from each market. Participants were selected if they had 40% or more of their work done virtually or if they worked physically and the leader was located elsewhere. Project managers were interviewed to understand the dynamics of each market and the technologies used in virtual teams (prior and post to the ERP); these interviews were qualitatively analyzed and triangulated with surveys to assess e-leadership, innovation, cross-cultural competence and organizational networks. The parent company's attempt to standardize the system in the foreign subsidiaries and the subsidiaries, made it harder to overcome the growing cultural difference caused by the unique demands of each market. The study focuses on business model innovation to gauge factors that enable or impede innovation and Actor-Network Theory to understand how the introduction of new technologies created new obstacles in the context of cross-cultural communication networks by expanding the trait theory and using e-Leadership as a moderator to explore the determinants of successful leadership in a highly virtual global workspace.
