Leaders of Global Virtual Teams: Implications for the Identification and Training of Successful E-Leaders

The business environment is an ever-evolving enterprise, and as technology advances so do their operations, allowing for more businesses to become global. This increase in globalization has led to the problem of how to manage these activities around the world. Virtual teams have become one solution, but they present their own challenges in regards to how to effectively manage a team that is culturally diverse and lives in various times zones. Through the analysis of 91 research articles and texts on the topic of e-leadership, this research identifies the most prevalent indicators of the management practices of leaders of efficacious global virtual teams (GVT). This thesis found that trust, cultural intelligence, communication, leadership styles, and technology are key for GVT leadership. These indicators have been linked to personality characteristics for traditional teams and multinational teams. This review will form the proposal for an empirical investigation into the validity of these frameworks towards the study of e-leadership in GVTs