E-leadership in the public sector

Purpose and goal

The purpose of this project has been to identify what is good and bad with e-leadership in the public sector. An E-leader has to form and distribute work that can be done by a virtual team. As a leader it is important to leave tracks that is still there when the leader physically is somewhere else and also to decide how to check on results. E-leadership gives a possibility to work in the same way all over the country. But an e-leader might have problems with change processes and conflicts in the team. To be successful the size of the team is important as well as how virtual meetings are conducted.

Results and expected effects

This project that will be finished about two years from now will result in a report in which a framework for how to work as an e-leader will be presented. It is advisable for an e-leader to write a sort of communication contract with the co-workers in the virtual team in which the leader decides what the purpose with the virtual team is and how work is going to be structured and performed. In the leadership development program that now exists in this poblic organization there isn´t a virtual module. My hope is that the result of this project might be included in a future educational program.

Approach and implementation

This is a qualitative study using interviews. The researcher started exploring the organization and what plans they had for re-organization and implementing virtual teams. The researcher then conducted interviews with the project leader and with one of the leadership team that is responsible for one specific sector of the organization. After having gone through this data the researcher went back and interviewed several different e-leaders for different teams with a focus on pro/con e-leadership and virtuality. This has generated interesting data to continue working with.