The Nature of Virtual Leader-Member Communication and Attributes of Virtual Leader-Member Relationship: Research Note for Methodological Triangulation

The rise of the digital economy and technologies of Internet-mediated communications triggered the global economy in a multitude of its networks and functions. Additionally, COVID-19 indeed accelerated the use of digital technology in organizing and managing work virtually. Current research focus has been on the aspects in which virtual work and function are characteristically different from face-to-face ones; however, there is very little knowledge available on how this organizing of work in virtual spaces happens. For example, virtual leadership literature covered in this paper focuses on virtual leadership performance and its correlations between behavioral and personality traits of team leaders and the quality of communication between team leaders and members. However, we do not have adequate knowledge of how virtual leader-member relationship develops since the ways of organizational communication and exchange have been altered. Building on this case, this paper proposes the holistic investigation of virtual leadership from both a social constructionist’s point of view (by adopting the conversation analysis method) and from the reflective phenomenological perspective (by adopting relationship anecdote interview techniques). This methodological synthesis takes the multi-ontological stance in an attempt to emphasize the nature of reality as multiplex.