from leadership to e-leadership: a paradigm shift author(s): monica

From Leadership to E-Leadership: A Paradigm ShiftAuthor(s): Monica Bansal and Kavita SinghSource: Indian Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 40, No. 3 (Jan., 2005), pp. 394-409Published by: Shri Ram Centre for Industrial Relations and Human ResourcesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27767969 .

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UIR, Vol. 40, No. 3, January 2005 COMMUNICATION

FROM LEADERSHIP TO E-LEADERSHIP : A PARADIGM SHIFT

Monica Bansal and Kavita Singh

THE PATH OF E-LEADERSHIP

One of the most important issues challenging the human dimensions today in business organisations is the application of IT and how it affects the complex interpersonal interactions within

organisations. The use of Local Area Networks (LANs) and Wide Area Networks (WANs) may have considerable impact on

organisational communication since it is transmitted within and

outside the chain of command, as well as alters the patterns of

communication.

It seems as if IT brings back what the human relations movement has tried to abolish: the mechanized system of

standardized work processes and operations governed by rules

and prescribed behaviours. Except now, work is automated and

self-regulated with people following predetermined codes and

procedures, which specify activities without much influence by the people involved. The formal authoritative system of control

that had demoralized people and triggered Chester Barnard's famous call to raise interpersonal communication to a high level

of priority has reemerged ? this time in a transformed fashion

- as a high-tech medium that paradoxically increases the

information processing capacities of the organisation, while

simultaneously reducing the amount and rate of verbal

communication.

Ms. Monica Bansal is Research Scholar and Dr. Kavita Singh is Reader, OB, OD and

Organisation Change, Faculty of Management Studies, University of Delhi.



Communications 395

The ability to control the flow of information centrally, by-pass middle manages, and connect directly with front-line employees can lead to another effect of IT ? top managers may have an

incentive to recover delegated authority. They can avoid vertical

loading and decentralisation of managerial decision making,

depriving middle managers of exercising their legitimate authority over lower levels and eliminating their function as communication

transmitters and translators. Information technology facilitates the

shift of managerial responsibilities to teams while stripping midlevel

managers of their traditional bases of power. Information

technology helps operationalise the needs for greater independence between employees and develop their awareness for joint

accountability

Larkin and Larkin (1994), who advocate direct contacts

between top and lower levels, cite research by Harcourt, Richerson

and Wattier (1991) who studied the communication practices of 871 US middle managers. Findings showed 16 per cent said their

most important source of information was formal communication

channels; 21 per cent said the grapevine; and 62 per cent, the largest group by far, said their most important information source was

their intentionally constructed network. Larkin and Larkin

concluded that information is moving in and through middle

management. It is not moving out. Therefore, when the change is

critical to the survival of the organisation, top managers are advised

to establish direct communication link with front-line supervisors

by calling them directly to see if they have received and understood the message.

O'Connell's (1988) assessment of the impact of IT on human communication and the system of interactions within the

organisation is worth mentioning.

Opportunities for face-to-face contact will be diminished; information from non-ver,bal cues will be reduced.

Consequently, opportunities for Random, spontaneous information sharing will be reduced. Managers will need to

structure work and relationships to provide for face-to-face

contact to occur. Meanings will be derived increasingly from

text and symbols.



396 Indian Journal of Industrial Relations

More informal messages and "short-circulating" of the

hierarchy will occur as new formats are accepted due to the

remote nature of an electric network. Organisation structure

and formal information flow will be redefined.

Trust will play a changed role in communication. Trust

develops with the shared experience, values and give-and take that are the results of human communication. Satellites, electronic mail, and networks could reduce the dimensions of trust to which we are accustomed. New dimensions of trust may spring up in their place.

The computer imposes the discipline of linear thinking. Data are processed at speeds that increase with new version of the chip. Consequently, people may become less patient and tolerant for individual styles of communicating. Organisations

will think or perceive in a strict, linear mode. Organisations will need to find ways to encourage and protect nonlinear

thinking and communicating.

Expectations of work performance may be machine driven. As we become accustomed to the speed and accuracy of the

computer, we may expect employees to have the same

qualities and produce in similar manner. Employees in some

organisations will perceive this as dehumanizing and

cohesive. Unions will take up the human environment as an

issue. New ways of defining and using performance standards will be needed.

Having the Information Technology shadow the old life style; a

major change can be noticed in the way people work or are required to work. In the working environment, where you do not get to see

your employees or team members daily or not at all it requires different

approach, different strategy and different methods to interact with

them. A similar change in turn, of course reflects in their behaviour, their thinking, their efficiency, their performance, their motivation, their satisfaction, etc. It becomes essential to track this effect so as to

mould the current practices, if all the resources are to be put to the best use. This is no new idea, but the divulging of the old basic law of 'adaptation to the change to survive, the only difference being that the

change is not so manifest, as it is gradual and abstract in nature.



Communications 397

THE IMPACT OF E-AGE

Time has certainly arrived when we can call the present age as

the electronic age or as popular, the e-age. This e-age has added an 'e' to virtually everything we see in the present time. But the

difference is in the meaning that gets added, which depends on the context. Here, we are going to talk about the impact of this 'e'

factor on the simple phenomenon of leadership in business

organisations. How does this 'e' actually make the difference when

added to leadership making it e-leadership?

Let us first take a look at how the business environments differ in old industrial age and today's e-age. The table below gives a

brief comparison between the two:

Industrial Age

An office

Quiet

Single task

Focused

Lifetime employment

Wages

Unions

Culture

Accuracy

Play on weekends

Seniority

Tangible products 9 to 5

Office buildings

Knowledge is power

Competitors

e-Age

A workspace

Noisy Multitask

Directed

Lifetime learning

Ownership Teams

Environment

70% solutions

Play at work

Performance

Intangible products

24/7

Anywhere, anytime

Knowledge sharing Networked alliances

Source : Annunzio, S. (2001), e-Leadership - Proven Techniques for Creating an

Environment of Speed and Flexibility in the Digital Economy, Simon and Schuster, NY.




This comparison shows a vast gap between the business

organisations' behaviours with time. This drastic change has given new meanings to the old concepts, one of them being the leadership, which we are going to analyse with an 'e' perspective.

WHAT IS E-LEADERSHIP ALL ABOUT?

Leadership can be viewed as a dynamic, robust system embedded within larger organisational system. Organisations create structures that define the relationship expected among

people who work in those organisations. For example, a hierarchical

organisational structure defines, in specific terms, who should be

reporting to whom, the boundaries of accountabilities and

discretion, and how decisions are to be made. The leadership system in hierarchical organisations builds on the structures by enhancing the relationships that exist between leaders and followers. How?

Leadership can be directive, in which case it takes the procedures and rules that go along with the hierarchical structure and makes sure they are properly and fairly administered. Leadership can

also be participative within hierarchical structures offering opportunities for people to dialogue about directives, and to be

more involved in decision-making than the structure itself makes

possible. Of course, the leadership system can drag down the

organisation if it creates inconsistencies, mistrust, and loss of energy, doesn't provide clear direction, and shows a lack of concern for

employees.

As mentioned earlier the global economy is undergoing a major transition with the advancements in the information technology. The rapid advances in information and communication technology which allow people to more easily generate, organise, and access

information have real implications for the capacities that leaders need. New technology has the potential to affect the distribution of power and the development of relationships in organisations. Therefore, an information technology enabled economy is creating a new context for leadership and it becomes important to consider how information technology interacts with leadership to influence both the structure and effects of leadership and how leadership, in turn, might influence the adoption of advanced information

technology and effects otx organisation.



Communications 399

Leaders in today's business world need to grapple with two

interrelated forces. First, the work of organisations and leadership has become increasingly global. An organisation's divisions and

subunits, customers, stakeholders, and suppliers can often extend worldwide. Second, the exponential explosion in communicating

technology has resulted into greater frequency of daily interactions

with colleagues, coworkers, subordinates and bosses who are

dispersed in different geographical locations. Today, business

leaders typically lead teams in which members are located, not in

the same office or building, but in different places around the world.

Today many leaders and team members stay in contact with each

other by interacting through telephone, overnight express mail, fax-machine and groupware tools such as e-mail, bulletin boards, chat and video conferencing (Zaccaro & Bader, 2003).

In response to these changes organisational scientists have

begun to talk about e-leadership to refer to leaders who conduct

many of the processes of leadership largely through electronic channels.

Leadership in the electronic age is surely different. As the

impressive and seemingly constant parade of developments in

computer and communications technology continues to change our world, we ask what remains the same and what has changed. One tremendously important context for leadership is impact of e factor on leadership.

It is different because it alters the patterns of how information is acquired, stored, interpreted and disseminated-and that, in turn, alters how people are influenced and how decisions are made in

organisations. The following are some specific happenings brought about by information technology in a way that alters leadership and its bases of power (Avolio and Kahai, 2003):

1. Access to information and media has changed

2. Greater workforce interconnectedness

3. It is easier to reach and touch others

4. Communication is more indelible than before




E-leadership can be defined as a social influence process mediated by information technology to produce a change in attitudes, feelings, thinking, behaviour, and /or performance with

individuals, groups, and/or organisations (Avolio, Kahai and

Dodge, 2001).

The key difference between leadership and e-leadership is that

e-leadership takes place in a context where work is mediated by information technology. In such a context, not only may a leader's

communication with followers take place via information

technology, but the collection and dissemination of information is

also through information technology. The critical differences may be in what is meant by "feeling the leader's presence", as well as

reach, speed, permanence, and perception of a leader's

communication. But the purpose of e-leadership is also to take the

relationships among organisational members defined by an

organisation's structure and enhance them.

E-Leadership Ultimately is not About Connecting Technology, but About Connecting People

Says Dave Tolmie, CEO of yesmail.com, a permission e-mail

marketer, "The success of a new economy company is based on

the collective capabilities of its people. Every company needs to be more coll?gial and less structured so that the collective talents have a way to manifest themselves."

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates echoed the significance of the work environment in his book "Business at the Speed of Thought: "The most important 'speed' issue is often not technical but cultural.

It's convincing everyone that the company's survival depends on

everyone moving as fast as possible."

Strengthening that comment, international e-Business

consultant Eric Marcus says technology represents only 5 per cent

of the transformation process. The other 95 per cent of a

company's metamorphosis is represented by the changes in

organisational behaviour and culture that are at the heart of e

leadership.



Communications 401

As a leader, it's not your job to worry about how your

technology is set up. There are people more techno-savvy than

you to make those decisions. Your job is more challenging and

ultimately, more significant to create an environment where

everyone can be allowed to come up with their creativity.

Technology is merely an enabler in the search for new products and services not an end in itself.

WHAT DOES E-LEADERSHIP DEMAND?

E-leadership demands shaking up the corporate culture and

fostering an attitude of speed and flexibility in order to facilitate the internal transformation to an environment for the new

economy.

E-leadership demands finding new ways to be a leader; new

ways to motivate when you don't see every employee everyday; new ways to communicate your vision and create a culture; and new ways to think about what a company is and what is should look like.

E-leadership demands managing the clash between baby boomers and the new brash Generation X and Y workers and

finding a way to combine the talents of both groups to achieve success.

E-leadership demands making the tough decisions that will set a company on the path to success in the new economy and in the

process save jobs, companies, and even entire industries.

E-leadership demands heroic behaviour. It requires abandoning

past business models and challenging current assumptions and

beliefs. It entails breaking many of the rules we've played by for

generations. It means sacrificing the comfort of the status quo in

the quest for a new direction that will survive the e-revolution.

E-leadership means challenging the accepted belief that ninning a successful business includes bringing the entire staff under One

roof from nine to five everyday. E-leadership may required trusting

employees to work independently in scattered offices. It may force




you to give up some of the symbols of the industrial age; hierarchical organisations, clear lines of authority

- even office

buildings.

E-leadership may force you to measure success differently, both

corporately and personally. In the future, the world is going to

measure success in terms of how many new ideas your company has generated and what kind of talent you're keeping and

attracting. Meanwhile, you may need to reconsider golden

parachutes, country-club memberships, and corner offices? things that were the measures of success in the past. In the world we

grew up in, these were ways of saying, "I made it." But they have

become increasingly irrelevant.

We live in a world of new technology. We are bombarded by it every day. The availability of new tools has affected every company; it's forced them to reevaluate their businesses and

rethink their strategies on marketing, distribution,

communications, and organisational structure. Even if the

strategy ultimately is to have no e-strategy, every business leader

has had to rethink his company's place in the world. The new world is about "ruthless execution," as Amir Hartman states it

in his book NetReady.

You must have a vision for your company. You need to create an environment where ideas flourish and can be challenged. You

need to deal with employees expediently and fairly. You need to communicate and inspire your workforce.

Creating an environment for the new economy is not just a

matter of getting up and telling your workforce that you want and need new behaviour. It has to be more than symbolic gestures.

"If you open up 'new' old companies, you'll see they look a lot like the 'old 'old companies,' says Carl Russo, the entrepreneur

whose Cerent Corp. became part of Cisco Systems in 1999. "The

dress code has changed, which is really neat. But I am not sure

that it has anything to do with the core value set the company uses day to day. I think it's hard to cut at the core of that."



Communications 403

Here lies your challenge. E-leadership requires creating a

workplace where new behaviour is encouraged. It demands a new, irreverent way of communicating with employees. You must make sure this behaviour isn't merely talked about, but really happens. E-leadership forces you to take the rhetoric of change and put it on the floor.

E-leadership is no different from any other form of effective

leadership except that in e-leadership you have no option but to be very good at it. It requires a high level of transformational

leadership because of the highly participative nature of the e-world between e-organisation and e-customers and the

interconnectedness between leader and follower with the ever

increasing reality of the blurred lines between them. But in the e world what does an e-leader do?

WHAT AN E-LEADER MUST DO?

Five tenets that an e-leader must do to be effective and successful are

1.Forgo stepzvardship for entrepreneurship: A steward, writes

Robert Hargrove (2002), co-CEO of Masterful Coaching, based in Brookline, Mass., in eLeader, is someone who conserves the

existing business. An entrepreneur "causes creative destruction

by transforming" the existing business or creating a new one.

An effective leader, Hargrove continues, must shift from "being a productivity and efficiency junkie to being an opportunity seeker and innovator who quests for that new, new thing. An

effective e-leader can't afford to choose between efficiency and

innovation, between maintaining existing businesses and

creating new ones, between revenue growth and increased

profitability. He must strive to make progress on all these fronts

simultaneously.

2.Innovate with abandon : We get excited about a new product or service and tend to ignore our current customers. Companies should "always try new things", but also learn to focus on and

apply innovation to their current customers." For this they have to

make sure that a sizable percentage of their current customer base




really wants those wondrous products and services they are

conjuring up.

3. Emphasize coaching and mentoring over managing the details :

Talent is the important strategic resource for future success, suggests

Hargrove. You can't win the talent wars without putting leadership

development at the top of your agenda. Leadership development in turn, requires a labour-intensive commitment to instilling in

people "a strategy of preeminence ? the belief that they can make

a difference in their industry or in the lives of their customers.

Such coaching and mentoring take time; even so, "the notion that

senior executives can't be bothered with the details of their business is crazy," Hargrove declares. Michael Eisner, for example, works on the design of rides at Disney World and has input into all of

Disney's films.

All our coaching and mentoring will come to naught ?

especially during an economic slump ? if you don't model the

importance of sweating the details. Downturn exposes the

weaknesses in your internal systems. Technical expertise ?the

ability to solve cash flow problems, interpret what customers are

really saying, or set up effective performance evaluation

processes?is what gets you through such times.

4. Design your culture primarily around the needs of Gen X and Gen Y employees : E-leadership demands heroic behaviour, writes Nextera consultant Susan Annunzio in e-Leadership: Proven

techniques for Creating an Environment of Speed and Flexibility in Digital Economy. "It requires abandoning past business models and

challenging current assumptions and beliefs. It entails breaking many of the rules we've played by for generations. If your corporate culture is stifling your ability to compete in the contemporary

market place, then the "enthusiasm, technological wizardry, and unfettered thinking of the younger generation may be just the tonic your company needs, so it would make sense to adopt the incentives and rewards most likely to help you attract and retain such workers. At the same time, you can't afford to forget the boomers?the current economic uncertainty makes their wisdom and experience all the more valuable. Still, it's easy to get too caught up in this perceived intergenerational clash. As Harvard Business



Communications 405

School professor D. Quinn Mills writes in Leadership: Guiding Your Business to Success in the New Economy, "Recognising that who needs to cooperate are often separated by a gulf of potential divergent interests and mistrust, the best one can do is try to identify and

promote a set of values of which most of organisations seem willing to conform." For this one needs to be attentive to how the different

generations in the firm are motivated. One needs to develop

dynamic reward systems that respond to the changing needs of

the workforce.

5. Use a brash communication style to disrupt the status quo: "The new e-world of speed and flexibility demands bold moves," declares

Annunzio. You need to offer employees undeniable proof that the

industrial age corporate culture is gone, and that you are creating an environment for the future. The way to do that is to blantantly and offensively break with the past through loud statements of

change, and then to reinforce that with new, irreverent

communications. It's difficult enough to usher in a new set of

attitudes when they're consistent with the core of the culture, notes

John R Kotter, Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership at

Harvard Business School, in Leading Change. In such circumstances,

you succeed by characterizing new attitudes as extensions of

company traditions and values. When the new attitudes are at

odds with the existing culture, the challenge is even greater. As

Ronald Heiftetz (1998), co-director of the Center for Public

Leadership at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government,

points out in Leadership without Easy Answers, it's important to

regulate the level of distress or disruption that people feel. If you make them feel too much pressure, they'll be unable to perform the adaptive work you're asking them to do. For this one needs to be only as brash as one has to be in order to keep people focused on the new roles and behaviours you're asking them to learn. If

they don't see the need for change an urgent, ratchet up the

brashness. But if they seem paralysed by all that you're asking them to do differently, temper your communications.

"The e-Leader recognizes that leadership is outdated today unless it helps people deal with great challenges offered by technological innovations and the emergence of the new economy"

Mills proclaims. Although those challenges are still out there, today




they don't seem to be engulfing us quite as fast as they did two years ago, nor does it seem necessary to jettison everything we

know about managing in the industrial age in order to address them.

SOME QUESTIONS ATTEMPTED AND STILL UNANSWERED!

The internet age has created the need for a new paradigm for skill formation and for learning

- that of learning to learn. In order to integrate management and technology, learning to learn also implies learning to unlearn past managerial theories and practices that are no longer appropriate and may even be destructive to

organisations. Many of these practices evolving from business

principles created in the eighties and earlier, are still the subject of most management schools. They are based on an era when

organisations were deciding what customers needed and business schools fostered through subjects such as Creating Customer Demands, etc. It has now changed all that and the emerging trend is the change of emphasis from that of the organisation calling the shots to now the customers calling the shots by demanding what they want rather than what is offered.

At the basis of the change is the need for management to recognise that the organisations are in fact social systems and the emergent technology property of the system, the e-world, needs to be well integrated into the whole organisational system itself. In essence this means that the major shift that the technology has created is that the customer, more than ever

before, has become the defacto leader in the organisation because of the way the internet has dramatically restructured

many organisations by allowing an unparallel entrance to it and to its decision making systems. In other words the customer has become the system, the organisation macro-system, wherein the

technology system and the organisational social system have become the micro-systems.

Leadership needs to recognise that the borderless, nationless force of the internet creates global customers in a truly globalised

marketplace. The leadership challenge is in dealing with the



Communications 407

human lag, or the social lag, to the technology spiral and the

consequences of this rather than the exponentially rapid expansion of technology itself. This fundamental shift has really only begun to accelerate at a speed never seen before in last couple of years. It

requires asking new questions of leadership such as:

What are the implications for your current leadership system?

The e-world has allowed everyone to have access to your business and products. It is therefore necessary to let your customers

and employees to lead and to think of you as collaborators. They can interact immediately with your business by letting you know

what their requirements are, what methods of acquisition of your

goods and services they require and what ownership and commitment do they want from you to sustain an equitable and

mutually rewarding relationship.

How do you integrate your leadership system with your technology system?

More than ever this requires a 360 per cent relationship with

your customer, yourself and your team. Feedback and exposure have become critical success factors in the e-age. Information itself

is not the critical component. Indeed it is estimated that by 2013 information will double every eleven hours. The critical component is the unified support that you offer to your people. This is the

emergent property of information in the emerging knowledge era.

Every encounter with your people becomes critical and, as a leader,

you must be able to take a comprehensive view of each of these

encounters as the speed of change in losing a person is as quick as

a click on a mouse.

Is your leadership style an enabler or a constraint to technology?

Given that most CEOs and other senior managers have been raised and inculcated with the belief that success is dependent on

competition and winner takes all, how does this paradigm fit with the e-world? Simply put, it doesn't! Why? Because the e-world is a

collaborative system. Jhe leadership style needed is one of total




collaboration, one of being an enabler of the human and technology

sub-systems within the new customer "owned" system itself.

Will your leadership system and your technology system co

evolve?

This would depend upon the leadership style. It requires a high level of transformational leadership. Transformational leadership is gained from multiple sources such that you have acquired

experientially, by programmed learning, and critically by your other

ways of knowing such as instincts, intuition, relationships, etc.

Indeed, given the rapidity of technology growth in organisation and their global reach, organisational scientists now suggest that

in the near future, e-leadership will be the routine rather than the

exception in our thinking about what constitutes organisational

leadership.

But the question arises what are the implications for leaders

and followers in teams and organisations where interactions are

now mediated by information technology? How should we develop leaders to work in this new environment? How does the technology affect trust, motivation, commitment and performance levels? What

does "having a presence," mean when the leader is projected into

the work group via technology? And what will organisations look like when we move through this time period and fully implement e-leadership?

It is true that we are using and investing in advanced

information technology to lead and to follow with an anticipation of increased profits, improved efficiency with enhanced

productivity without necessarily knowing the full extent of its

impact on human dynamics in organisations. Is it really working?

Likewise there are many issues which are needed to be explored as e-leadership is in its infancy stage. A whole new area is open for

research.



Communications 409

REFERENCES

Annunzio, S. (2001), e-Leadership - Proven Techniques for Creating an Environment of

Speed and Flexibility in the Digital Economy, Simon and Schuster, NY.

Avolio B.J. and S. Kahai, (2003), "Adding the "E" to E-Leadership: How it may Impact your Leadership", Organisational Dynamics, Vol. 31, No.4 pp 325 338.

Avolio, B.J., S. Kahai, and G.E. Dodge (2001), "E-Leadership: Implications for Theory , Research, and Practice", Leadership Quarterly, 11(4), 615-668.

Harcourt, ]., Richman V. & Wattier, MJ. (1991), "A National Study of Managerial Assessment of Organisational Communication Quality", Journal of Business.

Hargrove, Robert A (2002), E-Leader: Reinventing Leadership in a Connected Economy, Perseus Publishing, Cambridge, MA.

Heifetz, Ronald (1998), Leadership Without Easy Answers, Harvard University Press.

Kotter, John (1996), Leading Change, Harvard Business School Press.

Larkin, T.J. & Larkin, S. (1994), Communicating Change, McGraw Hill, New York.

O'Connell, S.E. (1988), "Human Communication in the High Tech Office", In Goldhaber, G.M. & Barnett, G.A. (eds.), Handbook of Organisational Communication, Ablex, Norwood, N.J.

Stephen J. Zaccaro and Paige Bader (2003), "E-Leadership and the Challenges of

Leading E-Teams: Minimizing the Bad and Maximizing the Good", Organisational Dynamics, Vol. 31, No.4.



from leadership to e-leadership: a paradigm shift author(s): monica

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