Power in Online Leadership

Abstract

In this chapter, the authors explore how power processes can promote or hinder effectiveness in online leadership. The chapter offers a theoretical and empirical analysis of the power processes in online leadership, using the triangle of structural, personal, and discursive power as an analytical lens. The theoretical outset for understanding online leadership is the literature on boundaries and boundary-spanning leadership. The authors define online leadership as social influence processes mediated by technology to produce individual and collective efforts to accomplish shared objectives. The chapter is empirically based on material from one of the authors' PhD work on online leadership in a global Danish manufacturing company. The chapter illustrates how power can be used both constructively and destructively in online leadership.