Charismatic Leadership in Virtual Teams. The Business Process Outsourcing Sector in Sri Lanka

Doctoral Thesis / Dissertation from the year 2018 in the subject Leadership and Human Resource Management - Management Styles, grade: 4.1, University of Kelaniya, language: English, abstract: The objective of the study is to explore the specific charismatic behavioural characteristics in leaders of virtual teams. The charismatic leadership model developed by Conger and Kanungo (1988) is the main theoretical framework for building this research argument. The Sri Lankan BPO sector was selected as the study setting and its virtuality was primarily tested using the virtuality index. The study is a mixed method research study and followed a sequential exploratory mixed method design.

The quantitative data was collected by a survey method using C-K scale and qualitative data collection was based on in-depth interviews and focused group discussions based on the questionnaire draws from the C-K scale. Factor analysis was employed to capture the behavioural characteristics of virtual charismatic leaders. Furthermore, the study found that charismatic leadership behaviours were present in the team leaders in BPO companies. The Factor Analysis created a new array of factors to describe the charismatic leadership behaviours in a virtual context.

The major contribution emphasized a new set of charismatic leadership behaviours present in leaders of virtual teams. A new model of virtual charismatic leadership was developed including seven behavioural characteristics. By comparing the charismatic behaviours of the Conger and Kanungo model and the proposed model, it was able to discover three behaviours that are unique to the virtual setting, to put forward the originality of the study: They are building trust in followers, the adaptive behaviour, and dealing with diversity.

This study added new dimensions to charismatic leadership and can be seen as an extension to the existing model of charismatic leadership of Conger and Kanungo (1998). Next, a detailed behavioural profile of virtual charismatic leaders was developed. In addition, to a concise conceptualization of virtual charismatic leadership it was also given to enrich the literature on leadership. The contribution to the knowledge and the implications were also elaborated, followed by future research directions.