E-Leadership or “How to Be Boss in Instant Messaging?” The Role of Nonverbal Communication

Abstract

Doing leadership in the virtual realm has now become a routine part of many leaders’ daily work, yet our understanding of how leadership is enacted in mediated contexts—especially in text-only channels—is very limited. By applying micro-level analysis to naturally occurring instant message conversations, this article exposes the strategies leaders employ to achieve a range of complex communication goals: to get the work done while fostering informality and collegiality and creating the sense of a real—and not virtual—collaboration between team members. The findings further our understanding in two domains: They provide empirical grounding for e-leadership theories by exposing practices from real-life interactions, and they contribute to discursive leadership literature by addressing nonverbal communication practices. The findings of the article could form the basis for management and leadership training by drawing attention to the linguistic and semiotic resources digital leaders have at their disposal in virtual work environments.

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/2329488416685068
Divisions: College of Business and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences & Humanities
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College of Business and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences & Humanities > Centre for Critical Inquiry into Society and Culture (CCISC)
Additional Information: Copyright: The author(s). Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Uncontrolled Keywords: CMC cues,computer-mediated communication,e-leadership,grounded practical theory,nonverbal communication interactional linguistics,virtual team leadership,Business, Management and Accounting (miscellaneous),Economics, Econometrics and Finance (miscellaneous)
Publication ISSN: 2329-4892
Last Modified: 25 Mar 2024 08:23
Date Deposited: 23 Oct 2017 11:30
Full Text Link:
Related URLs: http://journals ... 329488416685068 (Publisher URL)
http://www.scop ... tnerID=8YFLogxK (Scopus URL)
PURE Output Type: Article
Published Date: 2020-01-01
Published Online Date: 2017-01-13
Accepted Date: 2017-01-01
Authors: Darics, Erika (ORCID Profile 0000-0002-2216-6592)

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