Ledarskap på distans – En studie av arbetsrelationer mellan ledare och efterföljare på distans.

Sammanfattning: This thesis explores the demanding subject of leadership at a distance. It aims at seeking answers to the question on how a relationship between a leader and his or her employees is kept at a distance through various channels of communication. Thus, it aims at contributing to the understanding of how to maintain purposeful work relations and trust in leadership at a distance, and improve the understanding of how to communicate when leading at a distance. The study takes into account a broad theoretical approach looking into four significant aspects of leadership at a distance: communication, trust, virtual team and e-leadership. Nine semi-structured interviews with leaders and followers of five different organizations serve as the main empirical material. Our empirical analysis shows that various communication channels combined contribute to a positive relationship between leaders and their employees. The results of this study also propose a close linkage between communication satisfaction, trust and motivation in today’s virtual organizations. Amongst others, the study illustrates that even though social relations are not as considerably important for trust as many theories indicate, their impact on coordination is substantially higher. Although our results are very difficult to generalize, they could be used as working hypothesis for further research on the issue at hand.