Posted by In the previous parts, I described what concepts and divisions of management styles we took into account and why. So what results did we get?
Let me remind you of the two hypotheses we posed before the study:
- H1: In a highly structured work environment, every manager of a virtual team has the same leadership style.
- H2: In a highly structured work environment, the leadership style of a virtual team manager does not change.
We conducted the study on June 29-30, 2021 and lasted 36 hours. The group of observation participants consisted of 6 2nd degree students from the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland, working in two equal virtual teams, each with a designated team manager role. The students had basic competencies in managerial techniques, acquired during the “Managerial Techniques” and “Business Plan” courses. Both groups were given the same task, which was to design an entertainment program in Talent Show format on a YT channel. Participants could work at any time between 9 a.m. on the first day and 9 p.m. on the second day of the observation.
For both managers studied, hypothesis H1 proved true. The distribution of time of task-oriented and relationship-oriented activities was almost identical in both managers. In both cases, the management style can be called autocratic with a tendency to strive for a balanced one, as in manager No. 1 the share of time spent on task-oriented activities was 66.90%, and on relations only 33.10%. In manager No. 2, 62.36% and 37.64%, respectively. Thus, in this case, it is true that in a highly structured work environment, each manager of the virtual team had the same leadership style.
Hypothesis H2, on the other hand, did not prove to be true, as the leadership style changed during the course of the study in both managers, and quite significantly. These changes were rapid and sometimes even quite surprising. In addition, the changes in leadership style took a completely different course in the two managers. This could be read from the order in which the managerial activities were performed, their duration and the number of repetitions. In this case, it was not true that in a highly structured work environment the leadership style of a virtual team manager does not change.
Let me remind you that we recorded all managerial activities using online managerial tools on the TransistorsHead.com platform.
You can find the entire article and the exact results in this publication: