Online Leadership and Learning

Abstract

Online working environments develop and change continuously, meaning that online leaders and online team members must learn to adapt to change and should utilize emerging possibilities for doing their jobs. The purpose of this chapter is to explore how online leaders learn from experiences developed by and with online teams; the chapter also provides a metaphor by which online leaders' learning is likened to a spiral. The theoretical foundation rests in activity theory and proactive review. The methodological approach involves a case study and netnography, the latter of which is utilized for researching phenomena that occur in the interaction between humans and information and communication technology. Data were gathered online from an online team in a global IT company classified as big business. The following research question was addressed: How do online leaders learn from experiences generated by their online teams by utilizing proactive review as a practice of learning?