Remote leadership : enhancing leadership self-efficacy within a virtual context

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic forced global organizations to adapt to unprecedent challenges. Remote work rapidly became the new norm of everyday business operations. The drastic shift from face-to-face towards long-distance work was accompanied by insufficiently implemented preparation- and training measures.The objective of this thesis was to investigate which challenges remote leaders encountered within the virtual environment and how it affected their leadership style. Moreover, the effects on manager's self-efficacy expectations were investigated (cf. Bandura, 1977). These insights were supplemented by recommendations on how to strengthen the remote leadership role and how to enhance self-efficacy expectations for a post-pandemic era.This thesis employed a qualitative research design with expert interviews as the underlying research method. These referred to 14 remote leaders drawn from various SME’s or MNC’s carrying out part of their business operations within Germany. This research is sort of a complementary approach to the quantitative research of Staples, Hulland & Higgins (1998), which considered employees instead of leaders as the underlying sample and should be replicated at various time intervals.This thesis found six key factors that particularly challenged remote leaders throughout the pandemic: Distractive & nonuniform environments; lack of previous experience & insufficient training measures; difficult task delegation; slowdown of processes & decrease in efficiency; lack of control & transparency and psychological implications. While some leaders perceived no changes in their leadership style, others noticed slight tendencies towards top-down characteristics, such as more directive task assignments. Moreover, lack of experience and training were identified as key determinants for influencing self-efficacy expectations. The research further pointed out six recommendations to strengthen remote leaders and thus self-efficacy expectations for a post-pandemic future: Hybrid work models; suitable tasks; digital platforms; team events; catchups; training measures.