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Abstract: The study investigates the impact of e-leadership on the dimensions of interpersonal trust and organisational commitment of remote workers and virtual teams employed by an organisation operating in the United Arab Emirates. The responses of 193 remote workers were subjected to a series of factor, and correlational analyses using SPPS and structural equation modelling. The findings suggest that some e-leadership practices, such as 'virtual management by objectives' had a significant influence on the commitment dimension of identification. Moreover, the e-leadership practice of providing virtual feedback and support influences positively the dimension of faith in peers and confidence in management (interpersonal trust) suggesting that ongoing exchange of information related to employees' performance builds trust. In addition, the results clearly demonstrated that the virtual leaders need to further develop their e-leadership practices and be proficient in deploying the coordination and control mechanisms to facilitate information sharing between virtual workers. The limitations of the study are presented and directions for future research are discussed.
Keywords: commitment, e-leadership, interpersonal trust, remote workers, virtual teams
1. Introduction
Leadership research has been directed almost exclusively to face-to-face and verbal situations. Moreover, it is well documented some leadership styles are better predictors of desirable organisational outcomes (e.g. trust, commitment, job satisfaction, motivation, performance, etc.) compared to other leadership styles. For example, years of research concluded that consideration leadership is strongly related with subordinate satisfaction compared to initiating structure (Judge, et al. 2004), and transformational leadership increases performance and employee motivation more than transactional leadership (Dumdum et al. 2002; Bass 1985). Moreover, recent literature shows that varying trust leadership practices play a significant role in employees' communication needs and behaviours (Muethel et al. 2012; Casey 2010), and the development and maintenance of trust fully mediated the e-leaders' personality traits - team's effectiveness relationship (Pierce and Hansen 2008). On the other hand in a recent study it was found that "distance has a significant negative moderator effect on the contribution of leadership to trust development....." (Jawadi 2013, p.18). The research question raised then is: Are there any personality traits or 'tips' that could assist leaders and managers to build trusting relationships with remote workers and virtual teams?
In relation to other leadership outcomes, a plethora of research has investigated the relationship...