Leadership reconfiguration and the role of technology in global virtual teams with changing membership
研究了成员意外变动如何触发全球虚拟团队的领导力重构，以及技术在此过程中既加剧不连续性又创造新连续性来维持凝聚力的双重作用。
Today’s Global Virtual Teams (GVTs) are characterised by frequent changes in membership throughout their lifecycle. We adopt the lens of “configuration” to explore how leadership is “reconfigured” and the role of technology in this, when members come and go unexpectedly. We surveyed 16 GVTs involving 204 students, of whom 28 were unexpectedly switched between different GVTs. Our analysis suggests that changing membership triggers a reconfiguration in leadership, impacting who the leader is (structure), how they lead (styles), and what they do (practices). It also reveals that technology exacerbates discontinuities, disrupting cohesion, while also creating new continuities that help to maintain cohesion. We make two contributions to the Information Systems (IS) discipline: First, through our use of the “configuration” lens, we advance IS literature by revealing a dynamic understanding of leadership observed in GVTs with changing membership. Second, we contribute to organisational discontinuity theory, (a) revealing a novel interplay of continuities and discontinuities; and (b) explaining how continuities and discontinuities contribute to leadership reconfiguration. These contributions are important given the increasingly dynamic nature of virtual and hybrid teamwork.