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This thesis examines the changes in collaboration in medium-sized management consultancies due to the increasing virtuality during COVID-19. For this purpose, collaboration is divided into three categories: Team rituals, team dynamics, and communication. The study aims to develop recommendations for companies to deal with these changes based on the insights gained. These findings were obtained and evaluated by means of ten qualitative interviews with management consultants. The result of this research is that virtual collaboration entails both opportunities and risks and is strongly influenced by those three categories, whereby particularly communication plays a key role on a virtual basis.
With the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic and resulting lockdowns, the relevance of remote working has increased dramatically. The goal of this thesis is to answer the key question of what remote leadership looks like in German companies while also offering an outlook at the future of remote working.
In the first part of the paper, a literature review introduces the reader to current findings on digital transformation, leadership, remote working, remote leadership and the digital readiness of Germany.
In the second part, an interview study with ten leaders in German companies reveals how they think about and what suggestions they have on the remote leadership role, leading remotely, remote work as a concept, Germany as a place for remote working, future flexible working models and the influence of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The results of this study show that the most common remote leadership approaches in German organizations seem to be democratic and transformational. Furthermore, remote employees need more feedback and motivation than office-based employees. Working times of remote employees are controlled less strictly while results become even more important. Instead of being controllers and supervisors, remote leaders are often becoming team players. Lastly, hybrid remote working models are here to stay after the pandemic.
Future research on the topic could look at remote leadership from an employee perspective or survey larger participant groups about remote leadership to gain a broader view on the topic.
The current COVID-19 pandemic which resulted in a so called "people-crisis" changed the people work and forced businesses to re-locate teams to a virtual working environment.
Virtual and remote work became the only way for many firms to stay afloat, and it meant drastic and forced changes in the meaning of work for a large number of employees. Although this seemed to be impossible for many business organizations, the current reality proved the exact opposite. The pandemic put many teams on a test, which only the high-performers and the ones were ready to adapt, learn and grow could pass. Therefore, complex and well-developed organizations need effective team performance in order to survive. Even though technology makes collaboration possible in a virtual environment skills that make it successful. Employees who merely "perform their jobs" are no longer desired by many businesses. Instead, companies search for talent who own an agile mindset and have the required soft skills to work and adapt in a team.
The aim of this research is to provide general information on the importance of teamworking as well as to analyze the impact of the virtual working environment during COVID-19 crisis on the teamwork.