Ledarskap på distans - En kvalitativ studie om ledare och medarbetares samverkan i cyberspace

Sammanfattning: To lead and work remotely has become increasingly common due to a constantly changing working life which requires organisations to understand how it affects the relationship between leader and employee. The purpose of this essay is to examine how remote leadership is experienced and how it affects employeeship. We will try to understand and explain the factors that may affect this cooperation and what challenges that may arise. The study is a phenomenological study that uses qualitative interviews as a research method. Five interviews with five different leaders from different organisations were conducted with the purpose of understanding and describing the experiences of remote leadership. Our data results in a thematized description of the experiences and recurrent subjects that the interviewed leaders describe as common. The results show that leadership and employeeship are experienced as a cooperating relationship even at a distance with several influential factors that can affect the leadership and the cooperation between leader and employee. The lack of social interaction is identified as an important factor and consequence of the experienced leadership at a distance, which leads to further discussion about the new working life's needs, possibilities, and limitations.