The administrative and technological developments of the past few decades have significantly changed the nature of public management. While we have made important progress in our comprehension of these new dynamics, there is much that remains to be learned about the latter transformations, especially in terms of new conditions that it imposes in terms of leadership. E-leadership has become a necessity and reality for public managers operating at all levels of government (see Bekkers & Homburg 2007; Dunleavy et al. 2006; Milakovich 2012; West 2005; Van Wart 2014); yet, there’s little that we know about it. This presentation, drawing on original analysis of a public university will provide a demonstration of the evolving impact of e-leadership by examining the co-evolution of technology and leadership practices. It will utilize a modified version of adaptive structuration theory, a qualitative method designed by DeSantis and Poole (1994). It will provide both an overall examination of the impact of e-leadership on an organization, as well as insights into the effects of three specific advanced information technologies (AITs).
In a number of ways, effective leadership today cannot be envisioned without virtual technologies ranging from simple but ubiquitous email systems, to dynamic but unpredictable social media, to narrowly focused blogs and highly sophisticated internet interfaces, among others. Not only has e-leadership risen in importance, its ascendance as an approach appears to be still rising (White 2007). And while we have come a long way in our understanding of more technical aspects from an expert’s perspective of current possibilities (e.g., network design, transitions from legacy systems) (e.g., Carrizales 2008; Kohlborn 2014), there is surprisingly little that we know about leadership within the context of this new and often challenging space (e.g., Avolio et al. 2014 Purao, Desouza, & Becker 2012); this is especially true in government. Extant literature (see Ahn & Bretschneider 2011) suggests that AITs impose a significantly different set of operational, managerial and human challenges when compared to “traditional” face-to-face management. This, of course, requires a detailed revision of the skills, knowledge, and approaches that should be developed by leaders when operating within this new administrative space.
There are important contributions that this paper will make. First, this will encompass an original (perhaps first of its kind) comprehensive examination of a government setting—e-leadership with a multiple, differentiated, levels-of-analysis approach. Second, it will inform and educate public sector leaders on the critical, yet often overlooked, human and organizational challenges of leadership in a virtual environment. Finally, this paper will become a starting point for developing a broader theoretical basis to bridge the fields of e-government, e-governance, and virtual leadership into a more integrated e-leadership theory by providing a stronger empirical base regarding where we currently are.
