Leadership & Organization Development JournalThe impact of emergent virtual leadership competencies on team effectivenessPaul Ziek, Stacy Smulowitz,

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The impact of emergent virtualleadership competencies on

team effectivenessPaul Ziek

Department of Media, Communications and Visual Arts, Pace University,Pleasantville, New Jersey, USA, and

Stacy SmulowitzDepartment of Communication, University of Scranton, Scranton,

Pennsylvania, USA

Abstract

Purpose – The research on virtual team leadership does well to describe the skills that are needed toguide and direct effective teams. However, what is presupposed in the previous research is that virtualteams have assigned leaders. That is, leaders were either management, appointed by managementor were chosen by the team itself. Yet in today’s global economy not all virtual teams have assignedleaders, instead many virtual team leaders emerge on their own to direct the group’s actions.The purpose of this paper is to examine which emergent leadership competencies most impact virtualteam effectiveness.Design/methodology/approach – This is a mixed method study where both a participant surveyand content analysis of actual participant messages are used to determine the competencies ofemergent virtual team leaders. The research participants for the current study were required towork in assigned teams on organizational case analyses. At the end of each case, teams presented theirsolutions in the form of final recommendations designed to fix the problem present in the case.Findings – Results indicate that not only do leaders emerge in virtual teams, but in most casesmultiple leaders emerge. Results also show that the model that best describes team effectivenessincludes the competencies of asking questions, cognitive and creative ability and vision setting.Originality/value – The contribution of the current study is that it extends the research on emergentvirtual team leadership by introducing the idea that this type of leadership is often a collective actionamong individuals. It also advances a model of emergent virtual team leadership as a practice ofcommunication. The better emergent virtual team leaders are at communicating to team members themore effective the team will be in completing tasks and projects, which in turn can lead to a moreeffectively functioning business unit.

Keywords Communication, Virtual teams, Emergent Leadership

Paper type Research paper

IntroductionThe ability to disseminate and share information through information andcommunication technologies (ICTs) has redefined organizations by allowingmembers separated by time and space to engage in collective work through virtualteams ( Jarvenpaa and Leidner, 1998). Indeed the ability to overcome communicationbarriers has made virtual teams prevalent in all types of organizations. However, thereare repercussions to the increased reliance on virtual teams including as Colfax et al.(2009, p. 134) explain, how “traditional paradigms and models are not meeting theneeds of lean, austere and vibrant business operations of today.” Among theorganizational areas that have significantly changed is leadership (Connaughton andDaly, 2005; Pick et al., 2009).

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available atwww.emeraldinsight.com/0143-7739.htm

Received 30 March 2012Revised 27 September 201228 September 2012Accepted 1 October 2012

Leadership & OrganizationDevelopment JournalVol. 35 No. 2, 2014pp. 106-120r Emerald Group Publishing Limited0143-7739DOI 10.1108/LODJ-03-2012-0043

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Virtual teams have given rise to a new set of leadership challenges especially as itrelates to all-important team outcomes and performance (i.e. Hambley et al., 2007).Although virtual team leaders face a set of daunting problems that are not seen inmany traditional team settings – such as having to adapt to cultural, geographic andtime differences (Fjermestad et al., 2007) and helping employees adjust to virtual workroles and structure (Raghuram et al., 2001) – in the end, virtual team leaders must stilldeliver organizational outcomes and team performance (Smulowitz, 2007). Moreovereven though there has been an increase in the literature on leadership in virtual teams,there has been little focus on leadership competencies and how these skills relate tovirtual team effectiveness (Hajro and Pudelko, 2010). In addition, what is presupposedin the virtual team leadership research is that the teams have assigned leaders. Inmany instances, virtual team leaders emerge through growing influence andcontributions to the team (Yoo and Alavi, 2004). The current study explored these gapsin the research by examining which emergent leadership competencies most impactvirtual team effectiveness.

Literature reviewThe literature on virtual team leadership is growing (Ganguli and Mostashari, 2008) asresearchers from a myriad of fields including business, economics, communication andorganizational science have dedicated copious amounts of time investigating leaders ofgeographically dispersed teams connected through ICTs. However, according to Gibbset al. (2008) most of the research on virtual team leadership focusses on developingprescriptive leadership instructions. So although previous work describes at lengththe functions of virtual team leadership and the importance of developing a proficiencyin certain skills, there are still gaps regarding which leadership competencies relateto virtual team effectiveness (Ambrose et al., 2009). It is not that the relationshipbetween virtual team leadership and team effectiveness is not important, just thatcertain features of it are underdeveloped in the literature.

Kayworth and Leidner (2002) relied on behavioral complexity theory as a theoreticalfoundation which states that leaders must have the ability to perform multiple,contrasting leadership behaviors in any given situation. In a virtual team setting,behavioral complexity theory suggests that effective leaders should exhibit morevaried and complex behaviors than those who are perceived as less effective. To testthe premise, Kayworth and Leidner (2002) used a mixed methods (survey andinterviews) approach to study 13 virtual teams. The survey results indicated that bothteam members and leaders perceived mentoring and communication efficiency andsatisfaction as important competencies. However, the results from interviews exhibitedvariations among teams. When interviewed, team member’s perceived a leader’s abilityto overcome problems through assuming the role of motivator was most important.

To study the competencies of multinational team (MNT) leaders, Joshi and Lazarova(2005) conducted semi-structured interviews with group leaders and group members ofa software development division of a Fortune 500 computer company. While thecurrent study is not an investigation into MNT leadership, the literature is reviewedhere because much testing on virtual leadership occurs within MNTs. Overall, ninecompetencies were identified from a content analysis of the interview data: directionand goal setting, communication, facilitating teamwork, motivating and inspiring,empowering, boundary spanning, mentoring and resource acquisition. Theoverwhelming majority of respondents, whether a leader or team member, identifieddirection and goal setting as the most important competency. The goal setting

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competency includes being visible, setting clear goals and providing guidance tomembers in all locations. Communication was acknowledged as the second mostimportant leadership competency and respondents stated that this included enablingopen and proactive communication, actively listening and establishing personalrelationships across locations.

Revisiting the MNT context Joshi et al. (2009) extended leadership theories withsocial identity theory. Using a web survey of members of an international Fortune 500company, Joshi et al. (2009) focussed on studying commitment and trust because of theimportance these competencies play in facilitating group effectiveness in dispersedsettings. They found that in virtual team settings “lack of physical proximity, sharedcontext, and spontaneous communications with team members reduce the salience of ateam identity” ( Joshi et al., 2009, p. 249). Joshi et al. explain that inspirational leadershipis integral to overcoming reduced team identity because these types of leaders actedto bring salience back to the teams’ identity by presenting team members with theirvision and mission (Smulowitz, 2007). In addition, the study served to support thecontention that by cultivating socialized relationships with team members,inspirational leaders are able to foster attitudes directed at the collective team entity.

Despite the fact that a substantial body of literature has addressed MNTs in general,Hajro and Pudelko (2010) believed that the competencies of leaders in the MNT contextare relatively understudied. In order to fill the gap, they examined the competenciesthat leaders should possess in order to effectively lead MNTs. Their approach was toconduct problem-centered interviews with 38 MNT leaders and 32 MNT membersacross five companies. The participants were asked to explain how a team leader canimprove the effectiveness of his/her team and cope with critical incidents that are likelyto emerge in MNTs. The results showed that by far the most frequently mentionedcompetency was knowledge management and transfer which is when leaderscontribute to the creation and dissemination of knowledge within and beyond the MNT(see also Ruben et al., 2007).

The research on virtual team leadership does well to describe the skills that areneeded to guide and direct effective teams. However, what is presupposed in theprevious research is that virtual teams have assigned leaders. That is, leaders wereeither management, appointed by management or were chosen by the team itself. Yetin today’s global economy, not all teams have assigned leaders (Carte et al., 2006).Instead, in many virtual teams leaders emerge or move forward on their own to directthe group’s actions. In addition team participants perceive these members as leaders(Wickham and Walther, 2007). Therefore missing from the research on virtual teamleadership is an understanding of the competencies that emergent leaders possess.As Yoo and Alavi (2004) explained, emergent team leadership is a special circumstancenot based on organizational position but through growing influence and contributions.We propose to address the gap in the literature by answering the research question:

RQ1. What emergent leadership competencies are related to team effectiveness?

The first step to solving the research question posed in the paper is to determinewhether or not leaders emerge in virtual teams. After solving this portion of the puzzlethen the competencies of the emergent leaders can be studied in relation to groupeffectiveness. Methodologically we rely on both a survey and content analysis ofvirtual team messages to explore the emergence of leaders and the specific emergentleadership competencies needed for team effectiveness. The results point to some

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interesting patterns of competencies as they relate to group effectiveness, which areused to extend the current literature on leadership challenges in virtual team settings.

MethodologyVirtual teamsThe research participants for the current study included 60 undergraduate studentsenrolled in two sections of the same course. The students were grouped into ten teamsof six students per team mixed from both sections of the course. Students wererequired to work in the assigned teams on organizational cases analyses where theteam would discuss problems, theoretical insights and solutions to the cases. Theassignments, except for a final presentation, were to be completed in an onlinecourse management system. Students were instructed to only use the coursemanagement system to interact about the cases as they would only be graded for theironline participation. However, they were not forbidden to use face-to-face (FtF) or otheronline tools.

At the end of each case, teams were to present their solutions in the form of finalrecommendations designed to fix the problem present in the case. The finalrecommendations were the culmination of the team’s work on the case and were gradedby the instructor. Therefore group effectiveness was assessed by the percentage grades(Walther and Bunz, 2005) given by the instructors for the final recommendations,i.e., group effectiveness was measured as per the output of the virtual teams (Kayworthand Leidner, 2002; Walther and Bunz, 2005).

The students completed three case analyses during the semester. We had accessto the course management system through an administrator login that allowed us toobserve chat logs and print transcripts throughout the semester without alertingstudents to our presence.

InstrumentsThe current study uses both a survey and content analysis to determine thecompetencies of emergent virtual team leaders. The leadership literature providedseveral sources that described leadership characteristics, traits and competencies(e.g. Argyris, 1953; Kirkpatrick and Locke, 1991; Nadler and Tushman, 1990; Yoonet al., 2010). However, none of this literature dealt directly with emergent leadershipcompetencies. To make up for this deficiency, we combined the traditional FtFcompetency scales of leadership with those found in the literature on virtual teams. Inthe end, the mixed method approach allowed us to study a wide range of predefinedcompetencies from various sources in the literature within one online survey tool.

SurveyThe survey was based on Ruben’s (2005, 2006) Leadership Competencies ScorecardInventory (LCSI) (see Appendix 1) because nearly all the characteristics and traitsdiscussed by the other researchers can be found in one of the five competency areas ofanalytic, personal, communication, organizational and positional competencies. Thesalience of the LCSI has proven to be useful in the study of a variety of leadershipcontexts (i.e. Ziek, 2011) making it a perfect complement to the competencies found inthe virtual team leadership literature. The LCSI uses a single-item, five-intervalLikert Scale format to measure opinions of the analytic, personal, communication andorganizational competencies found prevalent in leaders. However, we also added a fewquestions prior to Ruben’s LCSI, including if the students felt one or more leaders

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emerged within their team, if the participant felt that they were the leader and thenwe asked the participants to also identify the leader(s) of the teams by name.These added questions allowed us to compare some important leadership traitswithin each team such as: agreement of team members on the leader(s); and thecompetencies said to be prevalent in the leader based on team members’ perception.The survey was administered electronically and 80 percent (n¼ 48) of the studentsparticipated.

Content analysisKayworth and Leidner (2002) explained that in a virtual team setting, leaders shouldexhibit more varied and complex behaviors. Thus, to supplement the traditional scales,content analysis was used to integrate six additional competencies previously foundby Yoo and Alavi (2004), Kayworth and Leidner (2002) and Wickham and Walther(2007) as specific to virtual leadership. These competencies included: frequency ofcommunication (Kayworth and Leidner, 2002; Hackman and Johnson, 2004; Yoo andAlavi, 2004; Wickham and Walther, 2007), quantity of communication (Hackmanand Johnson, 2004; Yoo and Alavi, 2004), primacy of communication (Hackman andJohnson, 2004; Yoo and Alavi, 2004), focus on communication quality (Hackmanand Johnson, 2004; Yoo and Alavi, 2004) and the demonstration of roles (Kayworth andLeidner, 2002; Yoo and Alavi, 2004; Wickham and Walther, 2007). To study theseemergent virtual leadership competencies, we examined the messages participantsposted on the online course management program, which included 1,030 postedmessages from the 60 participants. To maintain reliability, we devised a codingscheme (see Appendix 2) and used two coders who reached 96 percent inter-coderreliability.

ResultsEmergent leadersIn all, 92 percent of the respondents stated that a leader did emerge. In total, 20emergent leaders were selected and of that three, or 15 percent, received one vote. Inother words, 85 percent of the emergent leaders were chosen by multiple teammembers. In addition to the survey question asking participants to identify leaders andothers (Yoo and Alavi, 2004), we created an agreement measure “by dividing thenumber of times an individual was nominated by the number of opportunities fornomination to occur” (Wickham and Walther, 2007, p. 9). For example, four membersof group B participated in the survey and stated that Adam was the leader with a scoreof 0.8 (see Table I). The names used in the document are pseudonyms created tomaintain anonymity and confidentiality of the participants.

Leadership competenciesDuring their study of virtual teams, both Yoo and Alavi (2004) and Wickham andWalther (2007) found that there is a relationship between communication frequencyand virtual leadership. “Leaders in virtual teams send more messages” thannon-leaders (Yoo and Alavi, 2004, p. 41). Following this research, we counted thefrequency of individual message posts (n¼ 1,030, mean¼ 17, SD¼ 10) and found thatemergent leaders do communicate more frequently than others (i.e. Yoo and Alavi,2004). Leaders, on average, sent 27 messages while others sent an average of 12messages. In addition, while analyzing e-mail messages of virtual team members,

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Yoo and Alavi (2004, p. 39) discovered that “messages sent by emergent leaders weresignificantly longer than the ones by other members.” To study message length anddetermine if there was a difference between leaders and others, each message post wasmeasured by counting the number of words in the post (Yoo and Alavi, 2004)(sum¼ 134,724, mean¼ 2,245, SD¼ 1,589). Results show that there was a 42 percentdifference in the amount of words posted between leaders and others. Over the casesleaders averaged 3,635 (33.3 percent) words posted where as the other team membersaveraged 1,551 (66.7 percent).

Beyond the length and amount of messages, previous examinations of virtualleadership describe leaders as being proactive communicators, which is defined asinfluencing the tempo, progression and type of group communication (e.g. Joshi andLazarova, 2005; Yoo and Alavi, 2004; Wickham and Walther, 2007). To measure thecompetency of tempo, the participants were rated on their first post to each section ofthe case analysis (mean¼ 2.3, SD¼ 0.71). However, unlike earlier studies, here theprimacy of communication was not indicative of leaders. That is, leaders were notalways the first team members to post to the case. Clearly from the results regardingthe above variables, and the description of previous examinations of virtual leadership,communication is an important leadership competency. Virtual teams are often void ofFtF interaction and thus virtual leaders must become adept at communicationefficiency (i.e. Kayworth and Leidner, 2002). To further determine how adept leaderswere at communication efficiency (Kayworth and Leidner, 2002), we deemed messageseither task or procedural. The point here is that leaders will work to keep the teammoving forward both on the content of the discussion but also on the deliverable. Thenotion that leaders will use both task and procedural messages is important to considerbecause individuals were graded based on both their contributions to the discussion aswell as the team’s final deliverable. There were 899 task related (mean¼ 15, SD¼ 7)and 143 process related (mean¼ 2, SD¼ 4) posts. There was a clear difference between

Group Leader Score

B Adam 0.80C Christie 1.0D Amanda 0.90

Melissa 0.33Maria 0.50

E Dan 0.75Lawrence 0.80

F Amy 0.33Katherine 0.33Lauren 0.83

G Christina 0.75H Krista 1.0I Allison 1.0J Annette 0.80

JeanPierre 0.40K Abe 0.50

Colleen 0.75

Notes: Nick (Group D), Michael (Group G) and Jessica (Group K) all received 1 vote as leaderTable I.

Emergent leaders

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leaders and others as leaders made an average of six procedural posts and othersaveraged less than one procedural post during the study. The following message fromDan, in Team E, is a typical task message:

I agree with your points, except that by having a real leader of this group, that means you willhave wrecked the pure concertive control the upper management has put in place. They saidthey left the old system of line leads and supervisors to save costs, so there is no way any oneindividual will wind up being that way. What they should do is meet more as a team and runevery single major decision on hiring and firing on upper management. They should also gothrough proper training, as concertive control in a vacuum does nothing to actually controlthe group.

The following message from Amanda, in Team D, is a typical procedural message:

There is also an email part of this website that we can use to contact everyone, the problem isthough, that not everyone can chat or get in touch with each other at the same time! Noteveryone from our group is even posting so that’s a problem. I’m fine with handing in the finalproduct, but I need to know that everyone agrees on a common product.

The final virtual team leadership competency that was studied was the demonstrationof roles (Kayworth and Leidner, 2002; Yoo and Alavi, 2004; Wickham and Walther,2007). Although there are many important roles in virtual teams (i.e. broker, producer,monitor, facilitator, director, coordinator; Denison et al., 1995), we specifically coded forthe role of integrator because of the short interval life-span of the teams. The integratorrole is crucial to the design of these teams because each case study requires thesubmission of a final case recommendation. An integrator will work to coordinate theother team members into a unified whole so that the final case recommendations willbe completed correctly and on time.

The following message from Christina, in Team G, is a typical integrator message:

Team G FINAL RECOMMENDATIONS – (Please see attached document for teamrecommendations. Solutions by Group G. doc).

The integrator variable was measured using a nominal level: integrators were codedas “yes” and non-integrators as “no.” In total, 17 integrators emerged from the tenteams, of which 88 percent (n¼ 20) were emergent leaders. Results show that there wasa 49 percent difference in the amount of words posted between integrators and others.Over the cases integrators averaged 3,508 (28 percent) words posted where as the otherteam members averaged 1,742 (72 percent).

All but four of the competencies studied from the FtF scale ( problem definition,problem solving, review of results and influence and persuasion), had a scorefour and above. That is, emergent leaders were perceived to have above averageskills in the ten remaining competencies. Interestingly, problem definition, problemsolving and review of results are all “analytic competencies” that Ruben (2006, p. 15)states “is one of the more important aspects of leadership.” However, consideringthe teams have no history, the need for the competencies of problem definitionand problem solving are limited to what was included in the assignment andtherefore leaders did not have to navigate issues among team members, withtechnology, with superiors, etc. In addition, with no team history, the competencyof review of analysis or, the “ability to analyze and learn from history” (Ruben, 2006,p. 22) is superfluous.

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Team effectivenessTo measure team effectiveness course instructors graded the final recommendationsdesigned to fix the problem present in the case which was the culmination of the team’swork on the case. Therefore team effectiveness was assessed by the percentage grades(Walther and Bunz, 2005) given by the instructors for the final recommendations,i.e. team effectiveness was measured as per the output of the virtual teams (Kayworthand Leidner, 2002; Walther and Bunz, 2005).

We found that those leaders who received a higher score on both the virtual andtraditional FtF competences also participated in teams that were more effective – orreceived a higher grade. For example, the most effective team had the highest gradeaverage, 90.5 percent, over both cases. The least effective team had the lowestgrade average, 80.5 percent, over both cases. While it is not difficult to imagine thatleaders with better “leadership competencies” should work with teams that are moreeffective, the current study serves as a test case to affirming that notion. But becausethe model of leadership competencies created for the current study included multipleindependent variables, the researchers built a regression model to determine whatcompetencies best explain team effectiveness.

The results indicate that there were differences in the competencies used byemergent leaders in effective teams vs the other less-effective teams. The model thatbest describes team effectiveness, or the dependent variable grades, includesthe following competencies: asking questions, cognitive and creative ability andvision setting. These three competencies are the best predictors of team effectivenessbecause they explain 36 percent of the variation in the grades and infer that thebetter a leader scored on them, the higher the team scored. From a review of thediscussion logs it is clear to see that the participants who emerged as leadersgenerally displayed these competencies. For example, the following messagefrom Marie, in Team D, is a typical demonstration of the asking questionscompetency:

GENERAL NOTE TO EVERYONE: Its time we start thinking about who is going to do thefinal solution to hand in. Any volunteers?? If not we will have to work out some way ofassigning it fairly to someone.

The following post from Annette, in Team J, is an example of a vision-settingcompetency:

Just a quick reminder! I posted this in the last case study but at the bottom, so I just wanted tomake sure everyone read this at the top. To make our lives easier please split up your posts soeach contains only one problem! It’ll make it easier for all the other parts of the assignment,plus it’ll be easier to respond for everyone else. I know the professor made this announcementin class, but not everyone might have been in attendance.

Thanks!

This post by Alison, in Team I, provides an example of a cognitive ability and creativecompetency:

Loss of identity. I feel that the company has reduced certain perks for the employees and hasnow left the employees with a lower feeling of company identity. Through the perks I thinkthe employees felt like they were special and important to the company, but now with the lackof these incentives, or benefits I feel the workers feel that their work is less appreciated andthat they are not as important to the company.

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In response, Louis, also in Team I, provided backup to Alison’s demonstration ofinsight into the case analysis:

I agree with you that they feel less appreciated.

DiscussionThe increased use and reliance on virtual teams has given rise to the attention of thedimensions of leadership within these teams. The current study examined thecompetencies exhibited by emergent virtual team leaders and how these competenciesrelate to team effectiveness. As such, the current study brings important implicationsto light for managers and leaders of virtual teams.

One implication is that virtual team leaders must recognize that team effectivenessis related to their communication (Shachaf and Hara, 2005). Communication is the toolthrough which virtual leaders assume their position and status within the team.Because emergent leaders assume their role, as they are not assigned or appointed inanyway, they must communicate in a way that motivates and inspires the team to beeffective (Tyran et al., 2003). Specifically, leaders must be competent in askingquestions and have the ability to communicate their vision for the project, whichultimately brings salience to team identity (Smulowitz, 2007; Smulowitz and Ziek,2013) by overcoming reduced team identity ( Joshi et al., 2009) inherent in any virtualteam.

Another implication has to do with the shared leadership of virtual teams. AsWickham and Walther (2007, p. 11) describe, “CMC groups may identify with morethan one leader.” The current study found that 47 percent of the respondents statedthat two or more leaders emerged. However, and more importantly, respondents fromsix of the ten teams selected multiple emergent leaders. Therefore, most of the virtualteams involved in this study were significantly shaped by multiple emergent leaders.These findings demonstrate that leadership in an electronic online environment can bedefined as a collaborative, collective action. Since these leaders do not have theopportunity to choose the team they must become proficient at balancing the skills ofteam members. Once a team leader has evaluated the team, actions must be taken toeffectively perform the required tasks.

In this instance, leadership is related to the situational approach where “leadershipstyles focusses on flexible, adaptable leader behavior” and “additionally, leadershipbehavior can be exhibited in varying degrees of skillfulness” (Witherspoon, 1997,p. 58). Emergent virtual team leadership is a collective action among certainindividuals within a group. The theory of collective action describes how individualswork toward delivering certain goods such as roads, bridges, interactivecommunication systems, etc. (i.e. Samuelson, 1954). This theory has become centralin social science research and has been employed to explain a great array of diversephenomena. This theory can be used here to expand the leadership context becausethese multiple team leaders were working together to deliver a good, which in this casewas the final case recommendation. But more particularly, why collective action fitsso well is that it best explains how multiple leaders overcome the problems of freeriding (Olson, 1965). Free riding is where team members choose to let others do thebulk of the work. In these teams, multiple individuals emerged to share in the actionsrelative to virtual team leadership and in doing so made-up for the work of the freeriders. The following message from Amanda, in Team D, is an example of such

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collective action found in this study where emergent leaders were more active teamparticipants and thus compensated for the free riders:

You can do whatever you want to try to get them to participate more, but honestly, we havewritten numerous posts on here, I’ve written an email, I mean, what more can we do? If theydon’t want to collaborate with us, we can’t do anything more about it. It’s shame to have tosay that but it’s true.

This then brings to the forefront some research trajectories related to the emergenceof multiple virtual team leaders. To begin, future research needs to study how multipleemergent leaders work together. That is, do their competencies overlap or work inconjunction with one another? For instance, does one leader exhibit extroversionand thus has a high quotient for motivating the team whereas the other leadsthrough idea initiation. To do this will require coding for additional competenciessuch as the expression of opinions, leader definition of roles, motivation effort,performance evaluation, feedback, as well as behavioral displays of cognitive abilityand openness.

LimitationsAs with any study, this one is not without its limitations. There is a limited sample size(n¼ 60) and this was a one-time study. This limitation is balanced by the context of thestudy. Virtual teams are a growing phenomenon as organizations are relying heavilyon them to maximize productivity, lower costs, serve customers and capitalize onglobally dispersed talent which means that there is a need to understand effectivepractices for leading these teams (Burtha and Connaughton, 2004). Another limitationis that the study uses student teams, perhaps questioning the relevance of virtualteams in the workplace. The limitation is mitigated by the fact that today’sundergraduate students already rely heavily on computer-mediated communicationand virtual teams. Strong business and social pressures are currently drivingcorporations, non-profit and educational institutions to adopt virtual teams (Ebrahimet al., 2009) therefore students are currently working in virtual teams throughinternships and online courses. Finally, there is the limitation that the studentsoverwhelming disliked the chat function technology of the course management system,which they believed hindered their ability to properly manage interactions(Ziek and Smulowitz, 2010). This is mitigated by the fact that students are veryfamiliar and savvy with electronic media (e.g. Raghuram et al., 2001) and thereforedevelop work-a-rounds so that the quality of the leader-member exchange doesnot suffer.

ConclusionTheorists, researchers and academics that have focussed on leadership for the pastcentury have produced a variety of important research on the practice. However,research on virtual team leadership (Badrinarayanan and Arnett, 2008; Ebrahim et al.,2009), in general, and emergent virtual team leadership (Yoo and Alavi, 2004),specifically, is in the early stages. Not all virtual teams have assigned leaders. Insteadsome rise on their own to direct the team’s actions, especially in today’s interconnectedworld (Carte et al., 2006). The current study contributes to the knowledge onemergent virtual team leaders by providing a way to understand how a leader’scompetencies relate to team effectiveness. It advances a model of emergent virtualteam leadership as a practice of communication. The better an emergent virtual team

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leader is at communicating to team members the more effective the team will be incompleting tasks and projects, which in turn can lead to a more effectively functioningbusiness unit.

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Appendix 1. Survey instrument

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Appendix 2. Coding schemeEmergent leadership in virtual teams coding schemeSheets are organized by group letter (B-K) in separate Excel worksheets. In each worksheet is theparticipant’s name followed by the following column labels:

(1) Number of posts (label each post as 1 and use a new row for each).(2) Length of post (word count of each post).(3) Composition of post:

. Task (label this as 1 if the post was task in nature, leave blank if procedural).

. Procedural (label this as 1 if the post was procedural in nature, leave blank if task).

(4) Time (write in name):

. 1¼ first to post.

. 2¼middle post.

. 3¼ late to post.

(5) Integrator (Yes if integrator, leave blank if not).

About the authors

Dr Paul Ziek is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Media, Communications, and VisualArts at the Pace University – Pleasantville (NY). His primary research interest is how thecommunication-information-media matrix shapes interaction and communication. Paul holdsa BA from Rutgers, an MA from the New York University, and a PhD from the School ofCommunication and Information at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Dr Paul Ziek isthe corresponding author and can be contacted at: pziek@pace.edu

Professor Stacy Smulowitz, PhD Candidate, ABC, is an Instructor in the Department ofCommunication at the University of Scranton (PA) where she teaches courses in advertising.Smulowitz is completing her dissertation at the Rutgers University, where her studies focus ontheory and strategy for assessing and promoting excellence in organizational leadership. Shealso holds a master’s degree from the Ithaca College in corporate communication, a bachelor’sdegree from the Wilkes University in organizational and interpersonal communication, and isaccredited through the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC).

To purchase reprints of this article please e-mail: reprints@emeraldinsight.comOr visit our web site for further details: www.emeraldinsight.com/reprints

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