Patterns of Emergent Leadership in Virtual Teams

This study observed naturally occurring emergent leadership behavior in distributed virtual teams. The goal of the study was to understand how leadership behaviors emerge and are distributed in these kinds of teams. Archived team interaction captured during the course of a virtual collaboration exercise was analyzed using an a priori content analytic scheme derived from behaviorally-based leadership theory to capture behavior associated with leadership in virtual environments. The findings lend support to the notion that behaviorally-based leadership theory can provide insights into emergent leadership in virtual environments. This study also provides additional insights into the patterns of leadership that emerge in virtual environments and relationship to leadership behaviors.