Functional and Visionary Leadership in Self-Managing Virtual Teams

Abstract

In this conceptual article, we present a theory of leadership in self-managing virtual teams. We describe leadership in this setting as a process that results in the creation, reinforcement, and evolution of shared mental models and shared norms that influence team member behavior toward the successful accomplishment of shared goals. We distinguish two types of leadership. We identify leadership that works within and reinforces existing models and norms to influence team contributions as “functional” leadership. We identify leadership that results in changes in models and norms as “visionary” leadership. We propose that successful self-managing virtual teams require both types of leadership and that they will exhibit a paradoxical combination of shared, distributed functional leadership complemented by strong, concentrated, and centralized visionary leadership and that visionary leadership is enabled by functional leadership in the form of substantive team member contributions.

How and When Does Visionary Leadership Promote Followers’ Taking Charge? The Roles of Inclusion of Leader in Self and Future Orientation

“…Vision refers to the ideal state that an enterprise hopes to achieve in its future development, 30 and visionary leadership is vision-centered behavior by which a leader depicts the positive future of the organization in a vivid and clear way and then shares that vision with followers to motivate them. 31 Visionary leadership focuses on identifying the key factors of the organizational environment that motivate followers to pursue the organization vision independently 8 and finally prompts followers to constantly adapt to their environment and implement proactive behavior to achieve success. Self-expansion theory provides a theoretical basis for explaining the effectiveness of visionary leadership because it focuses on the social and psychological mechanisms inherent in leaders and followers.…”

“… 7 As a future-oriented style of leadership, visionary leadership may play an important role in triggering followers’ taking charge, which can lead them to discover opportunities together and encourage them to voluntarily approach their common vision. 8 However, we still know little about how and when visionary leadership stimulates employees’ taking charge from a follower-centric perspective.…”

“… 21 As a future-oriented style of leadership, visionary leadership may play an important role in triggering followers’ taking charge behaviors through vision communication (eg, taking charge), which can encourage followers to collaborate on opportunities and voluntarily approach their common vision. 8 Self-expansion theory provides an appropriate theoretical perspective to explain how and when visionary leadership influences followers’ taking charge behavior from a follower-centric perspective. According to Dansereau et al 22 the ability of visionary leadership to positively impact followers depends on whether it can meet followers’ needs for self-expansion.…”

Forced to go virtual. Working-from-home arrangements and their effect on team communication during COVID-19 lockdown

“…In contrast, such teams are in general characterized by a common work history on site which facilitates leadership, coordination, interaction, and communication. Compared to born-virtual teams, however, forced virtual teams are also subject to inherently different contextual factors that challenge their management (Charlier et al, 2016; Eseryel et al, 2021).…”

Seeing the big picture during the COVID-19 pandemic: the spillover effects of visionary leadership on employees’ work-to-family conflict

“…The main reason for such omissions may lie in the limitations of the theoretical perspectives used in prior research. To date, previous studies have largely relied on either the motivational perspective (e.g., Eseryel et al, 2021) or the self-conception perspective (e.g., Stam et al, 2014) to explain the beneficial effects of visionary leadership. The motivational perspective argues that visionary communication stimulates and aligns employee work motivation, leading to improved job-related outcomes (e.g., Berson et al, 2015;Maran et al, 2022;Van Knippenberg & Sitkin, 2013), while the self-conception perspective posits that visionary communication improves employees' work performance by arousing their ideal self (e.g., Jim et al, 2001;Stam et al, 2010).…”