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Paper Type
short
Paper Number
2055
Description
Digital technologies are reconfiguring how work is organised and how digital workers are led. Management and leadership research have conventionally assumed that organisations require top-down, hierarchical management. However, leadership in digitally enabled forms of work is bound to differ in substantial ways from more traditional in-person settings. Developing new theories that account for the dynamic and complex nature of digital work thus become important to understand how work is lead. Building on a multi-site ethnographic study of digital nomads, this research-in-progress shows how leadership emerges among independent digital workers. We focus on leadership emergence that is decentred from individual human leaders and instead foregrounds how direction is socially and materially produced. Our preliminary findings illustrate that in digital work leadership is emerging along three stages: mobilising the peer network, growing a digital audience, and building a global community.
Recommended Citation
Prester, Julian; Cecez-Kecmanovic, Dubravka; Schlagwein, Daniel; and Cahalane, Michael, "Emerging Leaders in Digital Work: Toward a Theory of Attentional Leadership" (2020). ICIS 2020 Proceedings. 12.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2020/is_workplace_fow/is_workplace_fow/12
Emerging Leaders in Digital Work: Toward a Theory of Attentional Leadership
Digital technologies are reconfiguring how work is organised and how digital workers are led. Management and leadership research have conventionally assumed that organisations require top-down, hierarchical management. However, leadership in digitally enabled forms of work is bound to differ in substantial ways from more traditional in-person settings. Developing new theories that account for the dynamic and complex nature of digital work thus become important to understand how work is lead. Building on a multi-site ethnographic study of digital nomads, this research-in-progress shows how leadership emerges among independent digital workers. We focus on leadership emergence that is decentred from individual human leaders and instead foregrounds how direction is socially and materially produced. Our preliminary findings illustrate that in digital work leadership is emerging along three stages: mobilising the peer network, growing a digital audience, and building a global community.
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