Understanding the influence of E-leadership on Virtual Team Performance

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the existing and the importance of E-leaders in organizations in the Saudi context. Paralleled with the globalization of trade and business, a new type of organization known as Virtual Organization (VO) has been emerged in the 1990s. The VO partners are relying on the Virtual Team (VT) to fulfill designated tasks and projects, by which interaction and collaboration take place among geographically distributed and often culturally disparate individuals. So, this study focuses on understanding the E-leaders as a new type of leadership about its VT members that are geographically dispersed. E-leadership may face many challenging in a virtual context such as building trust, articulating the influence, clear communication. In addition to the cultural differences and diversity, some of these challenges will be addressed in this study.