This paper examines team dynamics in a virtual team that has been developing and issuing updates to open source software code for a period of at least eight years. Our study seeks to extend the applicability of behavioral leadership theory to the broader examination of team dynamics in virtual teams. We developed and use a content analysis framework deductivelyderived from the literature on behavioral leadership to examine discourse, task-oriented, relationship-oriented, change, and network/boundary spanning communication behavior at two points in time in the ongoing interaction of the virtual team. Our findings support the notion the derived behavioral framework can be appreciably used to study emerging team dynamics over the lifecycle of virtual team interaction. Shifts in team dynamics not found in previous studies of virtual teams were found. In particular, relationship-oriented behavior, which was not found to be common in prior studies, was the most prevalent form of communication with in the team at the two points in time at which interaction was examined. Additional shifts were observed in the proportion of process and substance communication related to the team's task that were not found in earlier studies. Although preliminary, these findings suggest that team dynamics in long-standing technology-supported virtual teams differ from those found in virtual teams that focus on the completion of a single task within a relatively short-timeframe, which have been the focus of the majority of studies of virtual teams. Directions and implications for future research are discussed.
Abstract. Building on behavioural leadership theory and structuration theory, we present a two-order theory of leadership. It describes four classes of firstorder leadership behaviours {task coordination, substantive task contribution, group maintenance and boundary spanning) and defines second-order leadership as behaviour that influences changes in the structure that guides group action. We argue that second-order leadership is enabled by first-order leadership and is therefore action embedded and grounded in processes that define the social identity of the group. We propose that effective virtual teams will exhibit a paradoxical combination of shared, distributed first-order leadership complemented by strong, concentrated, and centralized secondorder leadership. We conclude by suggesting future research that might be conducted to test and further elaborate our theory.
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