E-Leadership: a New Paradigm

Shadowing the conventional life style, Information Technology has presented a major shift in the way people work or are required to work. It is not uncommon in today’s work environments that leaders and teams hardly see or meet one another. Such interaction demands significantly different strategy, methods, and approach for leadership. This difference reflects in people’s thought process, behavior, efficiency, performance, motivation, satisfaction and many other personal and professional aspects. In order to optimize the resource usage, tracking this effect and adapting current practices becomes quintessential. This is nothing new, but the divulging of the old basic law of ‘adaptation to the change to survive’. The difference here is the nature of change, which is gradual and abstract and not so manifest. Companies in various industries are investing in and using advanced technology for team communications, with an anticipation of increased profits, improved efficiency and enhanced productivity without necessarily knowing the full extent of its impact on human dynamics in organizations. Is it really working? This book is a research work focused to identify the impact of physical absence of leaders in organizations, where mostly technology connects leaders and teams. Various aspects used in the study, for measuring impact include Motivation, Trust, Commitment, Organizational Culture, and Performance. Since no such kind of research has been carried out in past in the context of Indian work environments, therefore an attempt has been made to do an empirical study on the issue of eleadership.