Perception of Management Students Towards E-Leadership

Syed Hassan Abdullah
Assistant Professor, ICBM-School of Business Excellence, Hyderabad, Telangana, India; and is the corresponding author. E-mail: hassan@icbm.ac.in

Sitamma Mikkilineni
Professor and Area Head (HR & OB), IBS Hyderabad (Under IFHE - A Deemed to be University u/s 3 of the UGC Act, 1956), Hyderabad, Telangana, India. E-mail: sita@ibsindia.org

Information technology tools have proven to be the desired response for sustaining organizational performance. The paper examines the perceptions of students towards e-leadership. It is based on the observations obtained through a survey from 105 students. An important finding in this paper is that e-leaders will encourage the exchange of information in the organization. The swift decisions, continuous sense of urgency and speed have made e-leadership a vital part of the organization. However, this has certain limitations such as misunderstanding, lack of trust and empathy.

Introduction

The global economy has been witnessing a major shift in recent times. There is a fundamental change in the way organizations build new markets and relate to their stakeholders. The adoption of Advanced Information Technology (AIT) like video conferencing, virtual teams, group decision support systems, artificial intelligence, robotic process automation and cloud computing has had important effects on organizations and the employees. Consequently, leadership processes are continuing to develop through the support of these technologies.

The term e-leadership was first introduced by Avolio et al. (2001) to describe leadership in a new emerging context and develop a nomological framework for analyzing it using the adaptive Structuration theoretical framework. The framework assumes that technology influences organizational structures including leadership and these in turn influence the use of technology. Avolio et al. (2014) proposed that the effects of AIT interact with and help to develop leadership and leadership itself is transformed when interacting with and adopting AIT. E-leadership is defined by them as "a social influence process embedded in both proximal and distal contexts mediated by AIT that can produce a change in attitudes, feelings, thinking, behavior, and performance".

All leadership theories generally focus on two fundamental aspects: the locus or source of leadership, and mechanisms or how leadership is transmitted (Hernandez et al., 2011). In the context of e-leadership, five loci of leadership have been delineated- leader, follower, leader-follower dyad, collective and the context. These loci provide distinctive yet interdependent sources of influence which can affect the theory, research, and practice of e-leadership. E-leadership can be transmitted via the traits (who one is), behaviors (what one does), cognitions (what and how one thinks), and affect (what one feels) associated with leaders and followers (Hernandez et al., 2011).

The Covid-19 pandemic has led to the focus on e-leadership as an emerging functional leadership style. The pandemic has caused many organizations to transition extensively into virtual teamwork, more decentralized organizations, wide networked administrations and complex and diverse communication channels (Venkatesh, 2020). Several organizations have established new arrangements that enable work to be done with increasing levels of virtuality (Brunelle, 2012). Accordingly, the new challenges, arising mainly from organizational and work-related changes, suggest new ways in which globally distributed experts, stakeholders, organizational divisions, and different firms have to work together. Virtual teams' goals try to attain team goals while operating independently of organizational boundaries, locations, and time zones. The globally spread virtual team members are primarily connected through advanced information and communications technology.

Therefore, e-leadership suggests the use of AITs to bring alterations in the behaviors and mental state of employees. It is not about using specific technologies, but about creating a sustainable digital environment that leads to high levels of organizational success-high productivity, low turnover, low absenteeism, high motivation levels, high job satisfaction, etc (Zaccaro and Bader, 2003). Technological developments have also penetrated extensively into Higher Education Institutions (HEI) and colleges, which are likely to produce national and global leaders in management, economics, culture, education, and other spheres. There has been a rapid explosion of technological innovation, e-learning and social media developments in education over the past couple of years. HEIs are providing information, and the teaching-learning process using the virtual medium extensively. Effective educational leadership processes are key to HEIs' success.

There are a few contributions that focus on how the leadership of HEIs should be shaped in a digital world (Ehlers, 2020). Anderson et al. (2017) emphasized numerous present issues with the current state of management higher education that included the relevance of skillsets concerning existing job opportunities and recommended pedagogies to develop modern types of learning to deal with turbulent enterprise environments. Brink et al. (2018) found that higher education institutions responded through setting up or including extra leadership courses in business, addressing the significance of leadership in their mission statements, developing programs, constructing specialized centers, and providing executive education.

Lanzolla et al. (2020) found that recent MBA graduates had been frequently unprepared to deal with company transitions that concerned digital transformations, virtual teams, e-leaderships, launching virtual projects and tended to over-rely upon their present managerial strengths even if conditions demanded that numerous talents be displayed. The researchers attributed this kind of loss of talent to the poor relevance and applicability of the e-leadership academic curriculum that those college students acquired.

Allen (2020) recommended management educators develop a virtual mindset and use assignments and share resources to put together college students for the virtual workplace. Specifically, he argued that course facilitators have the possibility to layout and facilitate mastering so that it will assist college students "be higher knowledgeable of future trends, the technology shaping business, the applications of these techniques, and ethical considerations". This call has been highlighted by new and rising thoughts about e-leadership and the examination of student perceptions about e-leadership.

Therefore, this study will add to the body of knowledge and academic literature by investigating postgraduate students' perceptions of e-leadership.

Objectives

• To examine the students' perceptions of e-leadership.
• To study the impact of Covid-19 on e-leadership.

Data and Methodology

This study is descriptive and uses both primary and secondary data for the quantitative analysis. A survey questionnaire (see Appendix) was used to collect data from 105 students registered for BBA and MBA program in a B-School. There are two sections in the questionnaire. Section A of the questionnaire captures the perception of students regarding e-leadership. Section B collects the personal information of students. Data was collected through an online survey by using Google Forms. Before the administration of the survey, the students were briefed about the study and asked to voluntarily participate in the study. The survey was sent to 150 students, out of which 105 responses (response rate - 70%) were received. The data cleaning process consists of checking for blank data, unengaged responses and calculating the standard deviation.

The internal consistency of the scale was measured by Cronbach's alpha technique. To study the perception of students towards e-leadership, the authors used SPSS (version 20) software.

All items in the questionnaire were measured on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree; 5 = strongly agree).

Survey: A 20 items survey was used to study the perceptions towards e-leadership. The items in the survey were adapted from the Executive Servant Leadership scale by Reed et al. (2011), to the context of e-leadership from the traditional face-to-face leadership. The Cronbach alpha coefficient was found to be 0.91 as shown in Table 1. Sample items from the survey are "An e-leader through advanced information technology will be able to maintain high ethical standards"; "An E-leader through advanced information technology will be able to encourage cooperation among employees". A situation given in the survey was to make the respondents understand the concept of e-leadership. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy was found to be 0.884.

The information related to gender, age group and level of education is shown in Table 2.

It has been found that a majority of the sample respondents (69.5%) were males whereas 30.5% were females. 52.4% of the respondents belonged to the age group 16-20 years and 47.6% were in the age group 20-24 years.

Results
The study examined the perceptions of students towards e-leadership. The questions were listed on a five-point Likert scale ranging from "Strongly Disagree" to "Strongly Agree". To have one positive response of "Agree", the authors have clubbed "Strongly Agree" and "Agree" as one. Similarly, "Strongly Disagree" and "Disagree" have been clubbed to get one response that is "Disagree". "Neutral" was left as it is. The results are presented in Table 3. The frequency table is used to analyze the survey.

Table 3 depicts that the students perceive e-leader to encourage the exchange of ideas/information (81.9%), treat with dignity and respect (72.3%) which were found to be highest using the advanced information technology tools. Students perceive that an e-leader would face difficulty in recognizing when employee morale is low (32.4%), replicating the behavior expected (22%) and encouraging cooperation among employees (21.9%). The students are neutral as to whether an e-leader would be able to encourage constructive criticism or not (42.9%).

Discussion
Transformational leadership theory explains the unique connection between a leader and his/her followers that accounts for extraordinary performance and accomplishments for the larger group, unit, and organization (Bass, 1985). Transformational leaders bring change in the individuals through motivation, improving morale, and enhancing performance of the followers. In the context of e-leadership, a transformational e-leader inspires and encourages the followers to achieve unexpected results. It gives workers autonomy over specific jobs, which leads to exchange of information through advanced information technology. Transformational leaders establishes a strong relationship with their followers and acts as a caring supportive resource. This builds respect towards the leader. Therefore, students perceive a transformational e-leader to encourage exchange of information and treat with dignity and respect.

The adaptation and learning of the organization are key factors for leaders to deal with all changes that may arise, take into account a way to manage workers and the organization's wheels. Leaders need communication skills. These skills are very helpful when dealing with individuals both within the internal and external environment of the organization. For e-leadership, either the communication process will need mediums such as computers and the Internet virtually or digitally, the communication processes will certainly be different from face-to-face communication.

Furthermore, several respondents state that conducting virtual and digital communication is very different, and they feel a reduced level of trust compared to communicating directly where they can feel the response of the other person directly. They need training in virtual and digital communication skills that can go beyond and have an impact on the effectiveness and efficiency of the performance of the organization (Dasgupta, 2011).

However, communication through the intervention of social media like Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp Messenger, Zoom Meeting must uphold the ethics and rules of communication. Communication through social media is certainly very unlike direct communication where leaders cannot be free while speaking because many individuals will understand the conversation and have limitations in conveying the intent and purpose. Therefore, leaders have the challenge to create effective communication in managing their organizations during social distancing due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The extensive use of online mode to communicate with employees is a hindrance and enhances the chances of limiting inter-personal connectivity with the bosses and/or higher management (Sosik et al., 1998; and Fan et al., 2014). This widens the gap in developing and understanding the employees' relationship and impact the synergy among them.

It is observed that the managers do not devote sufficient time and adequate care while communicating through messages. They are usually found engaged in another work at hand and passing on the text message, simultaneously. This ends up in miscommunication, inadequate or wrong communication and therefore enhances the chance of the message being wrongly interpreted. Thus, the managers are sensitized to the very fact that the utilization of social media for passing instructions or information must be limited to business hours except in case of emergencies.

The leaders may keep the online meetings/interactions crisp and short for avoiding the drop in interest and motivation of employees that may further result in reduced physical stress. Further, for addressing the issue of a message being interpreted wrongly, the manager may be instructed to give a voice note. Consequently, the possibilities of misinterpretation go down.

A few challenges associated with e-leadership within the context of the prevention of the spread of Covid-19 are that the leaders must adopt the culture of the organization in a short span of time to maintain the performance of their organizations.

Second, communication skills are a challenge to the e-leadership because the focus is to communicate through information technology tools that is different from communication under normal conditions. Third, the challenge of using social media and skills of using information have challenged the leaders to display their creativity by making content using social media as a means of information. Lastly, time management is one of the best skills that must be possessed by e-leadership (Znaidi and Sabir, 2019). Moreover, with good time management and a blend of information technology, leaders will become e-leaders who can manage their organizations without the time and place constraints.

Conclusion
The present study analyzes the perceptions of management students towards e-leadership. However, some limitations of the study are: the sample was homogenous; a large sample size needs to be considered; and reliable and valid instruments to measure e-leadership are needed. The scope of this study was to examine the factors of e-leadership through Exploratory Factor Analysis and Confirmatory Factor Analysis to develop an e-leadership scale. The study reveals that e-leaders will encourage the exchange of information with the employees. Trust, dignity and respect were found to be important components in the e-leadership process. The study affirms that e-leader will not be able to recognize when employee morale is low. Besides, in the absence of face-to-face interaction, students have accepted digital technology as a medium for learning. Thus, essential practices should be adopted for enhancing the quality of e-leadership to help the employees joining the organization with better learning during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Implications: This study provides a glimpse into students' perceptions of e-leadership, a deeper understanding that may help leadership educators structure the progression of courses and the co-curricular programming to assist students process and make meaning of not only leadership learning experiences but also those experiences within the context of their daily lives. The new e-leaders should avoid repetitions of older practices, which will not apply to the post-Covid-19 context; instead, they should be open to different e-leadership styles (e.g., emergent and varying types of shared leadership) that could be more suitable and work better for all. For example, a two-hour face-to-face meeting cannot be the same as a two-hour virtual meeting as this is likely to lead to fatigue in the Covid-19 environment.

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