Between Leaders and Followers: Developing a Relational Leadership Framework for a Virtual Work Context in Professional Service Firms

Abstract: Virtual work has steadily gained popularity in the last decades, and this development has been further accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and the first half of 2021. With clear benefits such as increased flexibility and reduced commuting times, it is speculated that a significant amount of work will continue to be virtual, even after the pandemic. However, virtual work can create various challenges to organizations, especially in regard to leadership and interorganizational relationships. Despite years of research, the effects of full-time virtual work on leadership are still poorly understood, especially in professional service firms (PSFs) that are characterized by collective leadership, ambiguous authority, and social learning. Drawing from social constructionism, newer approaches such as relational leadership, and the existing virtual work and PSF literature, this thesis sets out to explore the effects of virtual work on the relationships and interactions between leaders and followers, and to conceptualize relational leadership in PSFs. For a qualitative case study with a global leadership advisory firm, empirical data was gathered through 24 semistructured interviews. Three distinct types of interactions were identified based on coding and subsequent thematic analysis: project interactions, development interactions, and socialization interactions. Furthermore, seven tensions between leaders and followers within these interaction types were found by comparing and contrasting differing patterns in leaders' and followers' descriptions of the same situations: Stressing demands versus personal commitment, efficiency fallacy versus workload awareness, vanishing in the background versus proactive exposure, giving feedback versus avoiding conflict, getting the job done versus maintaining personal relationships, maintaining team spirit versus formalizing interactions, and longing for interaction versus resigning in isolation. The findings were interpreted by using previously reviewed PSF and virtual work literature, indicating the influence of leadership dynamics and contextual challenges on the leader-follower interactions in constructing relational leadership. Based on the empirical analysis and the theoretical foundation, a new conceptualization of relational leadership is proposed. The new framework seeks to provide a tool for future researchers to study relational leadership, for organizations to identify potential challenges in virtual work, and for leaders and followers to learn about dynamics and potential tensions within their own relationships.