Organizing and Leading Virtual Teams Through ICTs: A Sociomaterial Perspective

Sammanfattning: The adoption of advanced Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) is increasing in organizations which is altering organising and leading teams in many ways. Organizations are moving toward adopting more dynamic and global work structures namely virtual teams which mostly rely on ICTs as the main form of communication. The study investigates leaders’ practices and their appropriation of ICTs in virtual teams while applying a sociomaterial perspective which views technology and leaders’ interaction with technology as interlinked. The study employed qualitative approach based on data collected from two blogs run by Toptal which is a fully virtual company with no physical office. Additionally, cross-disciplinary journal articles were collected from Scopus database to perform an iterative content analysis and progressively develop meanings and results. The findings were organized according to two main categories: leaders’ practices and ICTs then analysed according to the five notions entailed in sociomateriality: materiality, inseparability, relationality, performativity and practices, as suggested by Jones (2014). The main contribution of the study was expanding knowledge about leadership practices and technology within virtual teams using a new theoretical lens. The study identified seven main practices of virtual team leaders including managing communication (formal, informal), supporting team technology adaptation, ensuring team alignment with goals, building team motivation, creating shared identity (culture), shaping trust, showing transparency, in addition to other practices like hiring self-motivated workers, managing time zones, encouraging innovation and creativity, leading by example, always being available, ensuring workers wellness and good listening. The study also identified ICTs that are commonly adopted by virtual team leaders such as Slack, email, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Skype and smartphones.