Leading teams in the digital age: Four perspectives on technology and what they mean for leading teams

Abstract

Digital technologies are changing the nature of teamwork in ways that have important implications for leadership. Though conceptually rich and multi-disciplinary, much of the burgeoning work on technology has not been fully integrated into the leadership literature. To fill this gap, we organize existing work on leadership and technology, outlining four perspectives: (1) technology as context, (2) technology as sociomaterial, (3) technology as creation medium, and (4) technology as teammate. Each technology perspective makes assumptions about how technologies affect teams and the needs for team leadership. Within each perspective, we detail current work on leading teams. This section takes us from virtual teams to new vistas posed by leading online communities, crowds, peer production groups, flash teams, human-robot teams, and humanartificial intelligence teams. We identify 12 leadership implications arising from the ways digital technologies affect organizing. We then leverage our review to identify directions for future leadership research and practice.

Flexible Environments for Hybrid Collaboration: Redesigning Virtual Work Through the Four Orders of Design

“…As we've discussed, different mediums of communication involve varying degrees of virtuality and therefore information content. Intentionally thinking about the benefits and detriments of a communication medium before using it at least improves employee awareness of repercussions, and at best increases shared understanding and communicative efficiency (Gibbs et al, 2017;Larson and DeChurch, 2020;Martins et al, 2004). How likely are the parties to understand one another?…”

“…However, the increasing complexity of projects often means that small teams are insufficient for the parallel completion of tasks necessary to complete a project on time. In larger virtual teams, sharing leadership responsibilities among team members improves performance by decreasing delays introduced by managerial inputs and oversight, especially in highly-skilled teams (Hoch and Kozlowski, 2014;Schaubroeck and Yu, 2017;Gibbs et al, 2017;Larson and DeChurch, 2020).…”

“…As discussed previously, despite the discomforts many users experience from excessive videoconferencing, lower team virtuality corresponds to improved performance. Establishing norms of low-virtuality technology use fosters shared cognition, affection, processes, and boundaries (Larson and DeChurch, 2020).…”

Everyday Things Change: Australian Athlete Communication During the Coronavirus Lockdown

“…The players and club staff had to quickly adjust from a context of close and regular face-to-face interaction to virtual interaction via technology as context for leadership and teamwork. Larson and DeChurch (2020) reviewed the literature on technology and leadership and determined that (a) the technology used influences the leadership practice in teams and (b) sharing leadership is beneficial for team leadership.…”

“…Using Zoom (video and audio) as a platform to conduct group training sessions facilitates interaction between group members, as opposed to other options that could involve players completing prescribed workouts on their own, thus not having the opportunity to practice leadership through interaction (Larson & DeChurch, 2020). The players indicated that the virtual presence of their teammates and coaches has allowed them to feel motivated and connected, an experience Player 1 sometimes lacks when doing self-workouts: "when I do a session by myself it is quite lonely : : : but with the computer screen, you randomly have people talking to you, it feels like you are actually with people."…”