دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی آگاهی از عملکرد IT و رفتار رهبری خودگردان در تیم های مجازی - الزویر 2018

ABSTRACT

Despite the pervasiveness of self-managing virtual teams, organizations find it particularly challenging to motivate virtual team members to exhibit and manage their leadership behaviors. This study contributes to virtual team leadership literature by specifically shedding light on how distinct awareness forms enabled by information technology (IT) signal important cues to virtual team members to self-lead, that is, self-direct their leadership behavior in their team. Our results reveal that IT-enabled disclosure awareness is key to inducing several leadership behaviors: directive leadership, supportive leadership and interpersonal helping. Further, for directive leadership and interpersonal helping, the relationship is contingent on IT-enabled task knowledge and IT-enabled presence awareness. At low IT-enabled task knowledge awareness or high ITenabled presence awareness, virtual team members who perceived IT-enabled disclosure awareness employed directive leadership and interpersonal helping. Opposite results were found at high perceived IT-enabled task knowledge awareness and low perceived IT-enabled presence awareness. This research highlights the critical role played by specific awareness forms enabled by IT in motivating virtual team members to engage in self-leadership.

6. Discussion

This study seeks to examine what motivates virtual team members to self-direct leadership behaviors. We address this question by examining the potential impact of distinct awareness forms—specifically, disclosure awareness, presence awareness and task knowledge awareness—as enabled by ITs. Overall, this research offers support for the particular importance of IT-enabled disclosure awareness in eliciting such behaviors. The results also suggest that different awareness forms supported by ITs signal important cues to virtual team members in shaping their choice of leadership style and interpersonal helping.

In terms of supportive leadership, there was surprisingly no interaction effect between IT-enabled task knowledge awareness and IT-enabled disclosure awareness. Rather, there were main positive effects of IT-enabled task knowledge awareness and IT-enabled disclosure awareness on supportive leadership. As scholars have asserted, supportive leadership is necessary to facilitate conflict resolution and to develop a psychologically supportive working environment (House, 1996; Wendt et al., 2009). Thus, IT-enabled task knowledge awareness prompts team members to enact supportive leadership. In addition, when working with remote or unacquainted members (as was the case for the majority of the team members in our sample), uncertainty regarding the team exists (Antheunis et al., 2012; Cramton, 2001). Researchers have found and contended that self-disclosure is pivotal in facilitating relational development, familiarity and interpersonal attraction, among other positive outcomes (Antheunis et al., 2012; Chiu & Staples, 2013). In keeping with the literature, our results show that IT-enabled disclosure awareness prompts supportive leadership, suggesting that IT-enabled disclosure awareness serves as an uncertainty reductive strategy (Antheunis et al., 2012) such that when members perceive that they know their team at a more personal level, they are more motivated to exercise supportive leadership. Unlike the results for supportive leadership, the results for directive leadership and interpersonal helping are far more complex, but are consistent with our predictions.