عوامل تعیین کننده ظهور رهبری تحول گرا در تیم تصمیم مجازی

This study examined the etiology of transformational leadership in virtual team contexts. First, we compared 127 members of virtual decision-making teams with 135 members of traditional face-to-face teams in terms of the relationship between aspects of personality and the emergence of transformational leadership. The type of communication media (face-to-face versus “pure” virtual) was found to interact with extraversion and emotional stability in the prediction of emerging transformational leadership. In line with prior findings, we showed how these personality characteristics were relevant to transformational leadership emergence in our face-to-face teams. However, they were largely unrelated to such leadership in the virtual team context. We also focused specifically on the virtual context by analyzing the content of team interactions. After accounting for the effect of degree of activity level, the linguistic quality in one's written communication was found to predict the emergence of transformational leadership in virtual teams.

Our findings pertaining to the predictive role of personality traits for the emergence of transformational leadership in VTs contradict the findings of Judge and Bono (2000), albeit in what should be considered a significantly different operational context. Whereas, in their study, several personality traits related to transformational leadership, we found no such link in our pure VTs. These findings are supportive of the interactionist situational dispositional perspective put forth by Murtha et al. (1996). A clear implication is that, unlike traditional face-to-face settings, in virtual settings, personality, as it is conventionally measured, may not readily influence the formation of transformational leadership perceptions. Oral communication and non-verbal cues, fully available through face-to-face interaction (but attenuated through communication technologies) may be necessary to drive the relationship between personality and transformational leadership perceptions on the part of others. Moreover, it is possible that the conventional assessment of personality through measures such as Goldberg (1999) is not transferable to virtual contexts for the purpose of predicting perceptions of leadership. On the other hand, it may simply take more time than was allotted to our short duration task to see the effects of conventionally-assessed personality in a pure virtual context. Obviously, additional research is necessary to better understand personality and its potential relationship to leadership in such settings. To a large extent, the Goldberg (1999) measures used in the current study were designed with face-to-face settings in mind. For a virtual context, constructs such as extraversion and emotional stability may need to be reconceptualized and perhaps alternative measures devised. That is, the findings of our research suggest that the manifestation, and perhaps even the meaning, of personality may differ in virtual versus face-to-face settings. What exactly does it mean to be extraverted in a virtual context? Is it possible for an individual to show extraversion in virtual settings, but not in face-to-face settings, and vice versa? For example, we can envision individuals who in a face-to-face context may be somewhat introverted or shy. However, in the relative social seclusion (or “safety”) of a VT, these individuals may be much more willing to speak up and thus become more outgoing. If such is the case, what is the implication for relationships between personality measures and leadership? Similar questions could also be asked for other personal or behavior constructs, such as aggressiveness and other forms of anti-social behavior. For example, in a virtual context, some individuals may be more prone to show (or be perceived to show) aggressive or rude behavior—as compared to tendencies in a face-to-face context. Such behavior, in turn, could lower perceptions of transformational leadership on the part of others. In sum, our findings suggest a number of questions for future research to answer regarding the assessment of personality and its effect on leadership in virtual settings. On the other hand, our findings do suggest that how much and how a person communicates through written media may be important in the determination of transformational leadership in virtual settings. That is, the extent of participation and grammatical complexity, or the intricacy of embedded grammatical structures in written sentences, were the best predictors of transformational leadership in our VTs. Thus, those who took care in crafting more grammatically-involved comments emerged as transformational leaders in their VTs, regardless of their personality traits. So although it may be difficult for team members to be perceived as transformational in a virtual context based on personality, active participation and the compelling use of words can overcome, in part, such a restriction. In line with the work of Berson et al. (2001) and Sosik and Dinger (2007), future research might attempt to examine the independent or interactional effects of inspirational vision themes and grammatical complexity in relation to perceptions of charismatic/transformational leadership in virtual contexts. 4.1. Managerial implications The findings of this study have some relatively straightforward practical implications. First, virtual media and settings represent growing phenomena in organizational teams. Even if not purely virtual, many teams are largely spatially or geographically distributed and rely on some form of computer-mediated communication. Accordingly, it is important to understand leadership processes in these contexts, including how leadership perceptions and influence are formed. Second, the findings indicate that the quality or intricacy of one's writing does matter as the potential for leadership influence develops, that is, as perceptions of transformational leadership are formed. Accordingly, the selection or development of leaders of VTs should take into account tendencies toward such qualities as grammatical complexity when communicating in VT context. Individuals lacking such qualities may find it difficult to take on the leadership role and may not be recognized as transformational leaders by potential followers. 4.2. Limitations and conclusions Finally, we recognize some limitations associated with our task and methodology. Although our participants fully interacted with each other until a problem was solved, they were formed into interdependent teams for only the brief duration of our task. It may be possible that personality characteristics and task knowledge gain in importance, whereas linguistic quality, gender, and participation lose in importance as a VT matures in its processes. Nevertheless, in the face-to-face condition reported above, we did find our expected relationships between personality and emergent transformational leadership. These findings would suggest that our task was indeed sufficient in both length and quality to produce relationships between personality and leadership. Further, our technology did not include real-time audio (or video) such as conference-calling (or teleconferencing) that VTs sometime use. It is not clear precisely how adding such features to our technology would affect our results, although we can speculate that these types of enriched media may permit greater effects of personality on leadership. In short, we recognize that it would be desirable to extend our work by examining leadership perceptions in VTs with access to enhanced communication channels, or VTs of longer duration to determine if similar findings would be obtained. In addition, we recommend that future research attempt to replicate our findings in VTs in actual organizations. In conclusion, the information processing approach used here provides some insight as to how transformational leadership perceptions are formed with regard to potential emergent leaders in face-to-face versus virtual contexts. Accordingly, the present research provides findings that may help to move the field forward in terms of understanding the etiology of transformational leadership phenomena, especially in VT contexts. Although we found no effects of conventionally-assessed personality in the VT context of the current study, we do not suggest that personality is irrelevant. However, alternative approaches to its assessment may need to be pursued. On the other hand, in a pure, text-based environment, perhaps it is not surprising that the quality/intricacy of one's writing might come into play as potential followers attempt to make sense of potential leaders—and their degree of possible influence through transformational leadership.