A Probing German Case Study on Trust Building Factors Around Online Leadership in Virtual Work Environments

With the rise of digitalization companies seek to enhance their efficiency by adopting virtual communication platforms. Although technological advancement helped companies to implement remote working and encourage flexibility, it comes with its own challenges such as virtual team building, engagement and one of the most important one, building trust. It therefore is pivotal to explore how trust building factors between the employee and the leader during online leadership in a virtual environment might affect a company's performance. In a probing study, nine semi-structured interviews with participants from different age groups and differently sized companies, pragmatically chosen from both management and employees, were conducted. All had experience of working remotely. Thematic analysis as described by Braun and Clarke is applied to analysing the data. The results are presented in a tentative framework of trust building factors and their importance for online leaders, showing amongst others the importance of proactivity, communication and-somewhat overlapping-social and emotional skills in managers. As managing this means additional effort, the allocation of sufficient time is an overarching topic. The results will allow researchers, including the authors, to be more focused in future in-depth studies on trust building in e-leadership.