Remote/virtual work is the topic for this discussion. The unpredictable nature of the latest COVID-19 pandemic forced organizations to adopt change, especially allowing employees to work remotely and stay connected virtually. However, there is not enough research on how this affects employee performance and contributes to the overall innovativeness of the organization. Before the pandemic, employees communicated socially in office settings, but remote work environments forced employees to work independently. For organizations to stay competitive, employee engagement and innovative thinking cannot be negotiated.

It is crucial for business and technology management leaders to lead organizations through tough times like the pandemic. Especially in virtual/remote environments, leadership behaviors are essential to overcoming employees difficulties (Bartsch et al., 2021). The remote/virtual environment will affect innovativeness and hinder communication compared to office settings (Coun et al., 2021). Employees showed reduced motivation and engagement, and organizations were forced to develop new strategies to address the situation (Whiteside & Dixon, 2022). According to Sull et al. (2020), organizations worldwide are experimenting with creative solutions to address the challenges in a remote work environment.

Leadership style is crucial to innovative work behavior in a remote environment (Coun et al., 2021). However, according to Pattnaik and Lalatendu (2021), there is a lack of research on remote or virtual work settings. This also leads to a question about what leadership style works best in a remote environment. This challenge affects organizations globally and all sectors, as employee engagement is crucial to success (Charoensukmongkol, 2016). Organizations must focus on determining a suitable leadership style with the increased adoption of remote and virtual environments, including academia (Han & Hazard, 2022). Leading organizations through these tough times require a flexible and evolving leadership style.

Remote/virtual work, telecommuting, and online work are commonly used interchangeably to refer to working remotely for an organization or attending college online. Organizations in public, private, and non-profit sectors have already switched to allowing employees to connect remotely (Chatterjee et al., 2022). In the past, employees could telecommute for short periods based on their needs, but with the pandemic, this became entirely remote, questioning how this affects leadership (Whiteside & Dixon, 2022). Organizational leaders must understand that strategic business decisions taken before the pandemic remain the same, with new roadblocks called remote work (Newman & Ford, 2021). According to the survey by Gartner (2020), at least 41 percent of employees across global organizations want to continue to work remotely post-pandemic.

Extant literature does not provide theories or models to help organizations adopt technologies for remote work (Chatterjee et al., 2022). The long-term strategy for remote work must be investigated for the impacts of remote work when continued for extended periods or sometimes permanently working remotely (Pretti et al., 2020). Some employees work more hours remotely connected than in an office by one to three hours (Sull et al., 2020). This means more professional time than personal time, forcing managers to think about the health and well-being of their employees (Matli, 2020). Some consequences of long-term remote work are loneliness, burnout, work exhaustion, and low morale (Bollestad et al., 2022; Parra et al., 2022; Pretti et al., 2020; Pattnaik & Lalatendu, 2021).

Based on the literature review, organizations are adopting remote work with no defined theories and models. And organizational leaders in all stages till top management have to experiment with different ways to increase employee engagement and innovative behavior and continue to be operative and competitive. The evolving change is not only in the view of organizations and managers but also from the employee perspective on how they can lead themselves better. Some researchers like Maden-Eyiusta and Alparslan (2022) included self-leadership as a crucial factor in a remote setting. The proposed research contributes to developing a theory that fits the remote work and leadership style, including how employees can lead themselves.

What leadership style best suits organizations to manage remote workers?

Traditionally leaders follow a different style when in office settings where interactions are physical, but when the environment is remote, leaders must learn and react to adjust. For example, Collie (2021) pointed out that autonomy-supportive leadership practices promote self-initiation and are inversely proportional to stress. In contrast, autonomy-thwarting leadership practices external control, and reduced self-determination is the outcome. Collies research is focused on teachers in Australia, and this must be extended to include a global setting.

The study aims to identify the correlation between different leadership styles and how they affect remote workers. While many organizations have already adopted remote work to remain operational, not having a theory or model and practices on how to lead employees will have consequences on their performance. This research identifies different elements related to the human factor, such as motivation, loneliness, innovativeness, personal time, work pressure, and the career of remote workers and their correlation to the leadership style chosen by the management.

In the quantitative approach, the hypothesis can be tested (Haynes-Brown, 2022). The statistical nature of the practice gives the flexibility to generate multiple views for further research and gives indications to extend the analysis to other sectors. The nature of the questions is survey-based, for example, how many extra hours you work when working remotely versus in an office setting. And to increase the scope, the data will be collected from multiple organizations and parts of the world, from different sectors like technology services, manufacturing, and so forth. Also, the quantitative method minimizes any associated ethical issues (Zyphur & Pierides, 2020).

The research aims to reduce the time in collecting data, so an online survey is best suited. This will generate data for statistical analysis and identify correlations. The data will be cleaned for outliers, tested, and trained using regression.

Comment on the post?