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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.
Many articles claim that the successful management of organizational change is from utmost importance to ensure the survival and prosperity of the company in the fast moving and ever-changing business environment. There are various techniques, models and theories that were created to help companies to cope with organizational change.
This thesis aims to conduct secondary research to answer the following research questions:
1. Are change management models still relevant in the 21st century concerning their applicability and expected outcome?
2. How can the Change Management models be compared?
3. What role does leadership play in organizational change management?
Therefore, the following eight change management models are considered:
• Lewin’s Change Model
• ADKAR Model
• Kotter’s 8-Step Model
• Kübler-Ross Change Curve
• McKinsey’s 7s Model
• Nudge Theory
• Bridges Transition Model
• The Satir change management model
It can be concluded that the eight change management models are still relevant in the 21st century but the implementation must be well planned and precisely organized and implemented in a faster pace than in the past. The models can be divided into two categories - organizational and individual change management theories. Through an analysis of the findings it can be stated that good leadership of the ongoing organizational change is indispensable. There is no doubt in the fact that change management needs to be well managed but in order to be well comprehended by the employees and sustained, effective leadership is necessary. It can be summarized that effective leadership of organizational
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change needs to combine the intellectual, spiritual, emotional and behavioral dimension with a strong focus on vision, values, corporate culture, strategy, empowerment of the employees, motivation as well as inspiration.
Globalisation has significantly shaped the way international organisations operate nowadays. The increased connectivity is continuously raising the number of global virtual teams, connecting employees across borders for project work. With cultural diversity, geographic dispersion and virtuality increasing the complexity of collaboration, the leadership of virtual teams constitutes a critical challenge. Consequently, the topic of leadership and its behavioural implications is progressively gaining businesses’ attention. However, due to limited research in this field, this thesis aims at identifying whether and how leadership behaviour affects virtual team collaboration, specifically between German leaders and Chinese team members.
After outlining behavioural characteristics of virtual leaders as presented by literature, the empirical research focuses on expert interviews with German virtual leaders. Here, a specific focus is put on their perceptions of their Chinese teams, the emerging challenges, their behaviours and the creation of a new virtual culture.
The results show the importance of leadership behaviour in this setting. They emphasise the effect it has on the virtual team members and provide recommendations with regards to behavioural adaptation to master this challenge.
This research explores the meaning of inclusive behavior of team leaders and members in the context of GVTs. The author focuses on implicit biases underlying inclusive behaviors. By investigating biases, this bachelor thesis provides a collection of exemplary behavior and best practices to overcome them.
As inclusive behavior in GVTs is a field of expertise that has not been explored extensively in relation to implicit biases, this research aims to add to the existing research.
It is based on primary and secondary data. The literature review is used to develop a comprehensive understanding of the challenges of GVTs, the leadership responsibilities, and building trust. It also investigates team effectiveness on the example of Project Aristotle as well as the impact of implicit biases on GVTs. Survey results and in-depth interviews with members of two GVTs uncover realistic examples for the aspects comprised in the literature review.
The results show that literature and reality correspond to a large extent. Furthermore, they reveal the impact of different levels of inclusive behaviors on teams’ ability to work together over a distance. While GVTs face many challenges, they see new opportunities in technology to extend beyond those.
The conclusion centers the importance of various communication channels and informal encounters as key to inclusive behaviors for GVT. Moreover, limitations to the research and a critical assessment for future research are discussed in the conclusion.