Navigating through new 'working from home' conditions: physical distance and the emergence of leadership behaviours

Objectives: the growing trend for both public and private organisations to introduce hybrid work locations is giving employees an opportunity to work both remote and proximal from their organisations. The goal of this thesis study is uncovering the contextual antecedents of leadership behaviours as a result of a work environment characterized by physical distance. Due to a lack of theoretical work on leadership which adequately understands the dual impact of both globalization and technology, this study seeks to develop a more in-depth understanding of the antecedent-conditions of physical distance and the relationship with the emergence of the task-oriented leadership behaviours: monitoring and clarifying, and the relations-oriented leadership behaviours: supporting and empowering. Four deductively constructed hypotheses are testing as possible mechanisms: feelings of uncertainty and stress, communication quality, trust in the leader-follower relationship and perceived control, as...Show moreObjectives: the growing trend for both public and private organisations to introduce hybrid work locations is giving employees an opportunity to work both remote and proximal from their organisations. The goal of this thesis study is uncovering the contextual antecedents of leadership behaviours as a result of a work environment characterized by physical distance. Due to a lack of theoretical work on leadership which adequately understands the dual impact of both globalization and technology, this study seeks to develop a more in-depth understanding of the antecedent-conditions of physical distance and the relationship with the emergence of the task-oriented leadership behaviours: monitoring and clarifying, and the relations-oriented leadership behaviours: supporting and empowering. Four deductively constructed hypotheses are testing as possible mechanisms: feelings of uncertainty and stress, communication quality, trust in the leader-follower relationship and perceived control, as guiding the relationship between physical distance and the emergence of leadership behaviours. Methods: the research method is qualitative in nature and follows a deductive explanatory research approach. To accomplish this goal the research design is a single-case study using primary data collected through semi-structured interviews with a municipal leader and four followers measuring their intended and perceived leadership behaviours from a single, and their immediate, municipal leader. Results: the findings indicate that physical distance can be considered an antecedent-condition for the emergence of both task- and relations-oriented leadership behaviours. Additionally, two out of the four tested mechanisms did show a relationship between the work condition of physical distance and the emergence of leadership behaviours. The mechanism: feelings of uncertainty and stress increased the task-oriented leadership behaviour monitoring, while the mechanism: lowered perceived control increased the relations-oriented leadership behaviour empowering.Show less

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Navigating through new 'working from home' conditions: physical distance and the emergence of leadership behaviours