Leadership of place in virtual environments

Leadership ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 174271502110451
Author(s):  
Gordon B Schmidt ◽  
Stephanie A Van Dellen
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Environments ◽  
Virtual Work ◽  
Virtual Leadership ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Place And Space ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Gig Economy ◽  
Physical Presence ◽  
Technology Affordances ◽  
Space Concepts

Place and space concepts help to illuminate how the place an organization inhabits and related beliefs have a significant impact on leadership processes. While places often have a physical presence, a sense of place is socially constructed by those who interact in it. This article offers analysis of how virtual environments can be seen as socially constructed places and how that conceptualization impacts leadership, both in the environment acting as a leadership substitute and how people engage in virtual leadership. This conceptual analysis occurs by integrating existing literature on space, place, technology affordances, and virtual leadership, as well as analyzing current virtual work environments and virtual leaders. We illustrate how virtual places can offer affordances for leadership sensemaking of political leaders, virtual place-making by social media influencers, algorithmic leadership, and shared leadership in the gig economy. We close the article by discussing how current leaders can consider the affordances of virtual environments and needed future needed research.

Afforded actions as a behavioral assessment of physical presence in virtual environments

2009 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 141-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Claude Lepecq ◽  
Lionel Bringoux ◽  
Jean-Marie Pergandi ◽  
Thelma Coyle ◽  
Daniel Mestre
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Environments ◽  
Behavioral Assessment ◽  
Physical Presence

scholarly journals Gig Expectations: Literacy Practices, Events, and Texts in the Gig Economy

2021 ◽  
pp. 074108832110529
Author(s):  
Christopher Corbel ◽  
Trent Newman ◽  
Lesley Farrell
Keyword(s):  
Literacy Practices ◽  
Virtual Work ◽  
Social Activity ◽  
Discourse Communities ◽  
Written Text ◽  
The Core ◽  
Gig Economy ◽  
Text Types ◽  
Online Labor ◽  
Core Literacy

This article explores the writing and reading requirements of the literacy practices, events, and texts characteristic of work mediated by the online labor platforms of the gig economy, such as Airtasker and Freelancer, which bring together people needing a job done with those willing to do it. These emerging platform-based discourse communities and their associated literacies are a new domain of social activity. Based on an examination of seven gig economy platforms, the present article examines the core literacy event in the gig economy, the posting and bidding for tasks, together with the texts that enhance and support this process. While some tasks require written texts as the outcome or product, all tasks involve the creation of some form of written text as part of doing the work. These texts are both interactional and interpersonal. As well as being a part of negotiating and then getting a task done, they relate to the complexities of building the identities, knowledge, and relationships required of those working in a virtual work space rather than a traditional workplace. While most of these texts reflect familiar text types, the core text cycle is argued to be an “emergent” genre. Implications for education are presented.

Virtual Worlds Affordances for Organizations

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn Aten
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Behavior ◽  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Virtual World ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Virtual Work ◽  
Psychological Needs ◽  
Organizational Adoption ◽  
Virtual Collaboration ◽  
Technology Affordances ◽  
Organizing Vision

Virtual work has become critical to competing in the global information economy for many organizations. Successfully working through technology across time and space, especially on collaborative tasks, however, remains challenging. Virtual work can lead to feelings of isolation, communication and coordination difficulties, and decreased innovation. Researchers attribute many of these challenges to a lack of common ground. Virtual worlds, one type of virtualization technology, offer a potentially promising solution. Despite initial interest, organizational adoption of virtual worlds has been slower than researchers and proponents expected. The challenges of virtual work, however, remain, and research has identified virtual world technology affordances that can support virtual collaboration. Virtual world features such as multi-user voice and chat, persistence, avatars, and three-dimensional environment afford, in particular, social actions associated with successful collaboration. This suggests that the greatest value virtual worlds may offer to organizations is their potential to support virtual collaboration. Organizational scholars increasingly use a technology affordance lens to examine how features of malleable communication technologies influence organizational behavior and outcomes. Technology affordances represent possibilities of action enabled by technology features or combinations of features. Particularly relevant to virtual world technology are social affordances—affordances of social mediating technologies that support users’ social and psychological needs. To be useful to organizations, there must be a match between virtual world technology affordances, organizational practices, and a technology frame or organizing vision. Recent studies suggest a growing appreciation of the influence of physical organizational spaces on individual and organizational outcomes and increasing awareness of the need for virtual intelligence in individuals. This appreciation provides a possible basis for an emerging organizing vision that, along with recent technology developments and societal comfort with virtual environments, may support wider organizational adoption of virtual worlds and other virtualization technologies.

scholarly journals Virtual Leadership: A Review Paper

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (4-1) ◽  
pp. 183-193
Author(s):  
Khurram Mehtab ◽  
Amjad ur Rehman ◽  
Saira Ishfaq ◽  
Raja Ahmed Jamil
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Teams ◽  
Review Paper ◽  
Performance Enhancement ◽  
Virtual Work ◽  
Team Leadership ◽  
Business Environment ◽  
Work Setting ◽  
Virtual Leadership ◽  
Work Settings ◽  
High Level

Abstract In today’s competitive business environment, virtual work settings present a growing challenge for rapid solutions of organization’s complex problems. This enables an organization to pool talent and expert employees by eradicating the time and space barriers. In accordance, companies are profoundly investigating on virtual teams’ performance enhancement. Virtual work settings revolutionize workplace by providing high level of responsiveness and flexibility. Virtual work setting has also many issues and challenges which must be addressed in order to enhance the team’s performance. Hence one of the major challenge of modern work setting is virtual leadership. This review paper presents an introduction to virtual leaderships, advantages of virtual work environment, challenges and recommendations for virtual leaders to enhance the performance of virtual teams. This article also offers review of earlier published researches and reports the findings on virtual team leadership in a struggle to the present the current state of work on this topic.

Shadowing Virtual Work Practices

2012 ◽  
pp. 10-30
Author(s):  
Craig Lee Engstrom
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Environments ◽  
Virtual Work ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
Virtual Space ◽  
Interpretive Research ◽  
Research Subject ◽  
Institutional Practices ◽  
Virtual Ethnography ◽  
Hybrid Character ◽  
Methodological Practice

Without modification, traditional ethnological approaches cannot fully attend to the translocation of practices into and out of virtual spaces. The ethnographer can observe the dislocation of a particular work practice from a specific place when he or she observes a research subject “log on,” but accounting for the translocation of others’ practices into the shared virtual space, which is necessary to conduct hermeneutical (or constitutive) research in virtual environments, remains an elusive methodological practice. In this chapter, interpretive shadowing, as it has recently been described (e.g., Czarniawska, 2007), is offered as one way to address some of the limitations of virtual ethnography. By describing (virtual) action nets vis-à-vis the “hybrid character of actions,” researchers are able to follow subjects and objects as they move through various spaces/places and describe how these actants constitute fields of practices. Drawing upon examples from two years of shadowing research within the field of private investigations, this chapter describes how shadowers can observe both immediate and virtual practices. Specifically, descriptions of how to account for institutional practices that transcend space, place, and time are provided. Though interpretive research is theoretically sound, examples of specific methodological techniques are provided to address some of the technical limitations of the method when using it to study virtual practices.

Identity Politics, Solidarities and Development in Jaunsar Bawar: A ‘Scheduled Tribe Area’

2021 ◽  
pp. 2277436X2110059
Author(s):  
Vandana Kumari ◽  
Vinay Kumar Srivastava ◽  
Ramesh Sahani
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Scheduled Castes ◽  
The Government

Identities make solidarities of one variety while they disrupt larger solidarities. Identities also are socially constructed by political leaders and the state. Jaunsar-Bawar is declared as a ‘Scheduled Tribe Area’ by the government of India. Hence, those living in the region even when they identify themselves as belonging to privileged castes enjoy the benefits of being categorised as ‘Scheduled Tribes’or STs. These privileged castes have come to dominate politics in the region and are depriving the really deprived Scheduled Castes of the benefits of development. The latter is becoming politically restive and are resisting upper-caste dominance. This article endeavours to study how the politics of identities affect the course of development along with the dynamics of conflict based on fieldwork data collected from the region.

scholarly journals Geographies of information behaviour: a conceptual exploration

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Cox ◽  
Crystal Fulton
Keyword(s):  
Design Methodology ◽  
Leisure Activity ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Place And Space ◽  
Information Behaviour ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Shared Information ◽  
Urban Exploration ◽  
New Perspective

PurposeThis article examines the relation between place, space and information behaviour.Design/methodology/approachConcepts of place and space are explored through a comparison of three leisure pursuits: running, urban exploration and genealogy, based on the authors' research and the published literature.FindingsA socially constructed meaning of place is central to each leisure activity but how it is experienced physically, emotionally and imaginatively are different. Places have very different meanings within each practice. Mirroring this, information behaviours are also very different: such as the sources used, the type of information created and how it is shared or not shared. Information behaviour contributes to the meanings associated with place in particular social practices.Research limitations/implicationsMeaning attached to place can be understood as actively constructed within social practices. Rather than context for information behaviours in the sense of an outside, containing, even constraining, environment, the meaning of place can be seen as actively constructed within social practices and by the information behaviours that are part of them.Originality/valueThe paper adds a new perspective to the understanding of place and space in the study of information behaviour.

scholarly journals Corona Concerts: The Effect of Virtual Concert Characteristics on Social Connection and Kama Muta

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dana Swarbrick ◽  
Beate Seibt ◽  
Noemi Grinspun ◽  
Jonna K. Vuoskoski
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Environments ◽  
Personal Characteristics ◽  
Empathic Concern ◽  
Social Connection ◽  
Social Distancing ◽  
The Social ◽  
Physical Presence ◽  
And Behaviors ◽  
Survey Responses ◽  
Being Moved

The popularity of virtual concerts increased as a result of the social distancing requirements of the coronavirus pandemic. We aimed to examine how the characteristics of virtual concerts and the characteristics of the participants influenced their experiences of social connection and kama muta (often labeled “being moved”). We hypothesized that concert liveness and the salience of the coronavirus would influence social connection and kama muta. We collected survey responses on a variety of concert and personal characteristics from 307 participants from 13 countries across 4 continents. We operationalized social connection as a combination of feelings and behaviors and kama muta was measured using the short kama muta scale (Zickfeld et al., 2019). We found that (1) social connection and kama muta were related and predicted by empathic concern, (2) live concerts produced more social connection, but not kama muta, than pre-recorded concerts, and (3) the salience of the coronavirus during concerts predicted kama muta and this effect was completely mediated by social connection. Exploratory analyses also examined the influence of social and physical presence, motivations for concert attendance, and predictors of donations. This research contributes to the understanding of how people can connect socially and emotionally in virtual environments.

Introducing a Video-Based Strategy for Theorizing Social Presence Emergence in 3D Virtual Environments

2015 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Kohonen-Aho ◽  
Pauli Alin
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Environments ◽  
Virtual Teams ◽  
Social Presence ◽  
Physical Environment ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Video Recording ◽  
Research Strategy ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
3D Virtual Environments

Researchers have recently suggested that although new technologies (e.g., 3D virtual environments) can enhance social presence in virtual teams, social presence is nontechnological in nature. Others have specified that social presence emerges in social interaction through copresence, psychological involvement, and behavioral engagement. However, current research methods do not fully capture the emergent nature of social presence in 3D virtual environments. We address this shortcoming by developing a novel research strategy for theorizing social presence emergence in 3D virtual environments. The novel research strategy is based on the assumption that understanding socially constructed phenomena (such as social presence) requires investigating human microbehaviors, that is, nonverbal interactions. To capture and theorize human microbehaviors in 3D virtual environments, the research strategy suggests video recording and analyzing interaction in the 3D virtual environment and in the physical environment. The research strategy expands the methodological scope of current social presence research and thus provides novel opportunities for creating a better understanding of how social presence emerges in virtual teams that operate in 3D virtual environments.

Virtual Leadership: Key Factors for Its Analysis and Management

2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 343-365
Author(s):  
Mariano Gentilin ◽  
María Alejandra García Madrigal
Keyword(s):  
Literature Review ◽  
Virtual Environments ◽  
Information And Communication Technology ◽  
Communication Technology ◽  
Systematic Literature Review ◽  
Team Cohesion ◽  
Virtual Leadership ◽  
Key Factors ◽  
Its Analysis ◽  
Information And Communication

The development of information and communication technology (ICT), as well as the situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, have encouraged the adoption of nonconventional schemes of work based on virtuality. In this context, leadership becomes one of the main challenges to organizations and teams. The purpose of this paper is to identify the key factors related to virtual leadership and to propose a scheme for analysing and managing teams in virtuality. After a systematic literature review, the main results suggest that leadership in virtual environments should be considered as a shared phenomenon and that the key factors with the greatest impact on virtual leadership are communication, trust, and team cohesion. The paper highlights and characterises these factors, as well as the actions that should be taken to manage them. As a major contribution, a four-phase scheme is proposed for the analysis and management of leadership in virtuality. Finally, three future lines of research are suggested.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document