Contradictory or complementary? Distributed leadership in a remote work setting

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has required organizations to shift their ways of working, especially around the location of work. Many companies have transferred to remote work models, which comes with benefits, such as increases in autonomy and decision-making power for workers, shorter commutes, and a reduction in office space costs, but also is accompanied with trade-offs, including barriers to communication, collaboration, and knowledge sharing, which can lead to social isolation and have a negative impact on collegial relationships. These trade-offs and changes in work have large implications for existing leadership practices, including leadership frameworks where working together and internal social processes are at the core of the framework, such as distributed leadership. The purpose of this thesis is to examine distributed leadership in a remote work context to determine if its practices can operate in such a contradictory setting, and if they can help to mitigate the trade-offs employees and organizations see with remote work. This was investigated through using a comparative organizational case study approach, which involved recruiting three organizations who participate in distributed leadership and remote work and performing semi-structured interviews with 22 employees total. Through conducting a thematic analysis of each cases’ data, results suggested that distributed leadership can operate in a remote work setting for organizations who do not rely on spontaneous collaborative and distributive practices, which do not transfer to remote work. Results also suggested that distributed leadership can mitigate for the negative effects associated with remote work when distributed leadership is implemented as a deliberate, structured strategy, rather than expecting it to emerge in a remote work setting. These findings large implications for businesses who practice remote work as it continues to be a prevalent practice even as COVID-19 restrictions lift, and thus it suggests a deliberate distributed leadership strategy as a potential solution to common problems organizations might see with remote work.