Leadership in a Changing World

Leadership in Telecommuting Teams

Leading a Changing World In paper, exploring emerging topic challenge leadership changing world work. Choose a specific topic Module 12.4 Landy Conte (2013). Provide overview topic, including: - Why chose topic - Why topic important study leadership, field I/O psychology, career; - And a review research articles focusing topic.

Telecommuting is increasingly becoming a concern for teams in organizations around the world. Many organizations have virtual teams because they are cheaper for the company and allow the employees to work in locations where they are comfortable. However, leading team members in a telecommuting environment is a challenge for leaders because it is difficult for them to handle team members who are in different locations, and sometimes even different time zones. Without employees having assigned workspaces or a common office where they can meet, it becomes difficult to schedule meetings. Basic leadership activities such as solving issues for organizations are also much more difficult in telecommuting teams. To manage telecommuting employees, leaders must be proactive in their communication and communication must be bi-directional Caillier, 2014.

With employees being a distance away, it becomes difficult for the leader to maintain significant control over their employees and to manage employee performance in the right way.

Why the topic is important to the study of leadership

As the numbers of organizations that use teleworkers continue to increase, and as the number of teleworkers in these organizations also increase, it is a challenge for leaders who have to find innovative ways to increase the productivity and efficiency of employees. For organizations which use sales trends to gauge employee performance, it is also extremely difficult for them to build stronger or better sales trends by motivating employees and training them effectively Raghuram, Tuertscher, & Garud, 2010()

Other issues that these leaders face in managing teleworkers is that they have to find ways to reduce labor costs, which are already extremely low considering teleworkers are much cheaper than onsite employees, they also have to eliminate redundancy, and find ways to optimize scarce resources Golden & Raghuram, 2010.

Leaders also face the challenge of managing and motivating wider teams in a variety of locations to collaborate efficiently.

While these organizations try to exploit the opportunities that they have with the telecommuting teams, they struggle with achieving business goals that are of high priority. Motivating these teams towards integrating their diverse skills in order to drive efficiency and innovation in the organizations is difficult. It is also difficult to share knowledge and brainstorm towards better products and services to drive efficient use of resources within the organization.

Leaders in telecommuting organizations face greater difficulty in overcoming liabilities that are inherent in the organization because the teleworkers lack direct contact that is often thought to be essential in developing task-related processes and collaborating. Understanding leadership in a changing world of telecommuters is important for these leaders to understand how to effectively motivate their employees towards greater success. They also need to understand leadership in this changing world in order to use the distance between the employees to embrace the benefits of leading in direct contact.

Why the topic is important in the field of I/O psychology and my career

In terms of industrial/organizational psychology, it is important for the leaders in telecommuting teams to understand how they can influence the morale of their team members and lead to their satisfaction, lower their stress and turnover. For these leaders, they must also understand how to interact with the internal and external aspects of the organization. These are difficult in the telecommuting organizations since their internal environment is complicated in terms of having different locations and possibly time zones.

As telecommuting is the future for many organizations which find using alternative work arrangements as more effective in ensuring they remain effective and efficient, the typical organization of the future will be one full of teleworkers. To become a leader in such an organization, I will need to understand how to manage teleworkers and relationships that exist in such an organization. These are not as straightforward as those in an organization with all workers at a single location rather the understanding of leadership in a telecommuting world is of extreme importance.

Articles that discuss telecommuting

Telecommuting, as described by Mahler, 2012(Mahler (2012)

is aimed at reducing environmental costs of the various organizations to the society. However, for organizations that rely on teleworkers, they seldom discuss strategies to lower cost even further because the impact of lowering any costs is barred by the use of teleworkers. Particularly the authors suggest that the impact of using teleworkers in large organizations could be negative because of the inherent challenges to managers and managers in telecommuting organizations. The authors suggest that whether teleworking is implemented voluntarily or involuntarily for these organizations, there is still a negative impact on employee performance. The author describes this as the divide between managers and employees that is brought about by telecommuting )