Leadership of place in virtual environments

Introduction: The importance of place in leadership

Leadership from a place or space perspective helps to illuminate the powerful impact of physical locations and socially constructed spaces on the nature and process of leadership (Collinge et al., 2010; Massey, 2005; Ropo and Salovaara, 2019). Where leadership takes place often significantly shapes how leadership happens over time. One significant and growing place for work and leadership is virtual environments, where leaders and followers are physically distant but connected through technology. While there has always been leadership from a distance through means such as messengers and older technology like the telegraph (Coe, 1993; Kirkman and Stoverink, 2021), virtual environments have their own aspects of place and offer affordances, that is, tools and functions, which help people engage in leadership to meet goals.

People increasingly interact with leaders virtually whether it is their supervisor, their political leaders, or people who influence their leisure time behaviors, such as social media influencers. Political leaders use social media like Twitter and Facebook Live to influence citizens about important issues impacting their state (Deye and Fairhurst, 2019; Wilson, 2020). Social media influencers try to make fans feel connected to the influencer through virtual platforms, impacting how they see a site like YouTube and what consumption decisions fans make (often to the benefits of the influencer) (Gilani et al., 2020).

Workers are increasingly asked to engage in aspects of their work in a virtual environment. Almost all workers and leaders engage in the workplace in part through technology elements like email and work applications like Zoom, Google Docs, Dropbox, and Slack (Schmidt, 2019). The degree to which a team communicates through technology, and is geographically dispersed, has been called virtuality (Gilson et al., 2015).

Some workers now in fact interact exclusively with co-workers and leaders virtually. Gig economy work involves individuals acting in a freelance role for organizations, doing individual tasks for organizations either with physical customers (such as Uber) or fully virtual tasks (such as website content creation and item categorization) through crowdsourcing sites like Amazon Mechanical Turk or freelancing sites like TaskRabbit (Petriglieri, et al., 2019; Schmidt and Jettinghoff, 2016). For many gig economy workers their official connection with an organization is just their “leader,” the application’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) (Harms and Han, 2019; Rosenblat and Stark, 2016), with the application engaging in many traditional leadership activities. Many gig workers have been found to create their own communities of fellow workers, working together in ways that can be seen as shared leadership. Shared leadership occurs when there is mutual influence, collective responsibility, and decision making between leaders and followers (Day et al., 2004; Hoch and Kozlowski, 2014; Pearce and Conger, 2003).

This article will consider conceptually the impact of virtual places on the processes of leadership, as virtual leadership is prevalent but in need of greater examination of how it is impacted by virtual places (Massey, 2005; Wilhoit Larson, 2020). We will examine virtual leadership and space conceptually, as socially constructed places, arising from online interactions between people.

This will be accomplished through a focus on the affordances technology gives to leadership goals (Landers and Marin, 2021). We will examine how virtual spaces can offer leaders affordances for sensemaking, helping followers or colleagues to understand and frame events related to the group (Gadelshina, 2020). We will discuss how social media influencers frame virtual places for their followers. Then, we examine how virtual spaces give an affordance for algorithmic leadership, by using Artificial Intelligence that acts as a human leadership substitute (Harms and Han, 2019), leading gig workers by creating work processes and structures. Finally, we will look at how virtual environments offer the affordance for worker shared leadership and collaboration, with the example of gig workers creating their own third-party website and applications, influencing each other. We conclude our article by discussing needed practical implications for virtual leaders related to place and affordances, as well as future avenues of needed empirical research.

Technology and leadership

While this article focuses on virtual leadership in particular, it is important to note that technology has always had a place in leadership and that leadership in almost any historical era has been conducted at times at a distance. Kings and leaders have communicated with followers physically distant through messengers and representatives. Various technologies have been used to help bridge such distances. For one example, the telegraph was used extensively in the American Civil War, with generals sending messages to particular units in the field directing action or giving information (Coe, 1993). For another, NASA Control communicated significantly with astronauts during flights, including dealing with the significant space craft issues found for Apollo 13 (Kirkman and Stoverink, 2021). In both cases, existing technology was used to better connect leaders to distant followers, helping leaders to engage in essential leadership functions. However, most leadership situations still took place in face-to-face formats, unlike today where technology tools allow for in depth and prevalent leadership behaviors at a distance.

When discussing the impact of technology on a construct, it is important to have a shared understanding of what technology is. Landers and Marin (2021: 240) define technology as physical or virtual materials that “dynamically afford” goal directed action by individuals or groups. Thus, the focus for technology is in how it is used and how that use connects to the goals of an individual or a group. Their definition is based on sociomateriality and affordances concepts for technology.

Sociomateriality is closely related to the idea of socio-technical systems, where technology and the dynamic social context of an organization it exists in are strongly entwined with each other and need to be studied together to truly be understood (Orlikowski, 2007). This dynamic relationship means as well that technology and its features do not remain static for long, as both change based on use and goals (Landers and Marin, 2021).

Affordances in the technology literature focuses on the idea that people do not ultimately care about a particular technology; they only care about the features it has that fit with their own goal directed behaviors (Greeno, 1994). What features people see for a technology will also differ based on their own experiences and interests (Landers and Marin, 2021). The affordance perspective focuses on these perceived uses as important rather than a particular piece of technology itself (Leonardi, 2012). Technology is important because of how it can afford or help a person to accomplish a goal directed task. This kind of focus can help to show commonalities across technology and how they are used, rather than tying relationships or results to a particular type of technology (i.e., not “Facebook causes this” but “the affordance of x that Facebook offers helps goal directed behavior y”) (Landers and Marin, 2021). This perspective helps connect technology and its uses across time, as we see how similar goal directed behavior was afforded through different technology. For example, a leader sending messages to a distant army through a courier fits with an affordance of facilitating distant parties coordinating activity in a similar way to a telegraph message or even a text message today.

This article will use this framing of technology and how it functions in the analysis of virtual leadership and place in virtual environments. This affordance focus will help to examine features of current technology and what they help facilitate, while also leaving room for the affordances examined to be looked at with future technologies, as well. Virtual spaces offer their own affordances for leader’s goal directed behaviors. Landers and Marin (2021) see virtual leadership as an area that could benefit from an affordance perspective.

Virtual environments have been primarily examined with regard to virtual teams, work teams for which a significant amount of team interactions happens through technology, not in a face-to-face environment. All teams can be classified based on their amount of virtuality, which measures the amount of geographic dispersion of team members and the use of technology to communicate and work with each other (Gilson et al., 2015). Considering the modern workplace, most teams will have some level of virtuality, with email in use almost everywhere and other technology often used in parts of organizational workflow. Each team will draw different affordances from technology based on their goals and experience.

While all teams and groups have degrees of virtuality, most conceptualizations of virtual leadership or e-leadership (Avolio et al., 2014; Schmidt, 2014) have focused on the case of leaders who interact almost exclusively online with followers, and usually just in work-related relationships. This is a myopic view, as when we think of virtuality as a continuum, virtual leadership becomes a concern for all leaders. A level of virtuality exists for all leaders with email, social media, and other technology already a major part of communication and task processes. To better understand virtual environments and virtual leadership we need to integrate the ideas of place and space into these environments.

Place and space in leadership

The importance of place and space in leadership is increasingly being recognized. This change fits with existing trends that try to go beyond approaches focused just on an individual leader’s personal characteristics and instead look at the contexts and factors that impact how leadership takes place (Collinge and Gibney, 2010; Ropo and Salovaara, 2019).

Collinge et al. (2010) see leadership as a major way that localities adapt to changing conditions and minimize negative disruptions related to such changes. Those engaging in leadership effectively understand the nature of a locality and its unique sense of place, behaving and leading in ways that fit in that environment. Collinge et al. (2010) also contend that leaders play a major role in place-shaping, the task of creating, making and reforming the places where organizations and people are situated. This fits with the conceptualization of space of Massey (2005), where space and place are socially constructed through individuals’ interactions. Our interactions and relationships with others create that sense of place and how we see it.

Space and place, thus, is not just physical environments. Place can be physical but is focused more on the sense of place and meaning of it coming from the underlying social processes and power relations (Collinge and Gibney, 2010; Cresswell, 2004). Organizations may inhabit very similar physical spaces while having employees with very different feelings of place. The real “place” that people feel is the network of social relations and interactions (Massey, 2005). Thus, leaders can create new places out of existing environments and configurations and help create a meaningful “place” out of dispersed locations (Collinge et al., 2010).

Ropo and Salovaara (2019) present spacing leadership as the means by which the people and the spaces they interact with create processes and attachments that act as substitutes for leadership, as well as a medium for engaging in leadership. Leadership is a process of influence that happens through personal interactions in an environment. Objects like computers, the water cooler, and smart phones impact a person’s behaviors and identities, which is seen as influencing leadership (Ropo and Salovaara, 2019). Virtual objects like computer applications and program Artificial Intelligence could be seen as having the same leadership influence (Harms and Han, 2019) and arguably engage in many of the major common types of leadership behaviors (Yukl, 2013). Understanding of the world and meaning attached to it are impacted by these spaces and objects (Ropo et al., 2013).

Ropo and Salovaara (2019) argue that the leadership environment is constantly being created and modified by those within it. Thus, perceptions of a reality for the people of a space always has an element of flux, and seemingly small activities of everyday life and its related performances build up to make significant changes to how the place is understood and related shared perspective (Massey, 2005).

Place and space in shared or virtual environments

With the sense of place crucial to leadership of space, questions and ambiguity arise as to what physical and non-physical objects and environments are part of a workplace, organization, or group. Research by Wilhoit Larson (2020) examined the physical places that workers feel their organization is “located” by asking participants to share pictures of their own workspaces.

Wilhoit Larson (2020) found that while many participants picked traditional spaces like corporate offices, a number picked virtual spaces, such as email or organizational software applications, and some picked spaces that could be seen as only partially and temporarily organizational, such as coffee shops or home offices. Virtual spaces were seen as unique, as they could be transported through computers and phones, and thus had the potential to be present almost anywhere, a valuable affordance. A person’s work-related files, emails, social media content, and the software that allowed them to be created were all part of the workspace for these workers and thus part of the organization (Wilhoit Larson, 2020). In the framing of space leadership offered by Ropo and Salovaara (2019), these virtual spaces were a key part of the interactions, interrelations, and processes related to the organization (Massey, 2005) and thus the leadership process.

Wilhoit Larson’s (2020) had another category of partially and temporarily organizational workspaces, involving spaces that would not often be considered organizational but are organizational because of how they are used by particular employees. One example in the article was a pastor’s work for his church was done while in his personal home, most often in a spare bedroom, but also in other parts of his house, with his family present (Wilhoit Larson, 2020). Thus, his home was an organizational space for him. Information technology like the smart phone allows the affordance of work able to be done in a wide range of places a person is temporarily in, such as a coffee shop, airport, or in the home.

But, as noted by Wilhoit Larson (2020) for the pastor in her sample, the distractions and needs of the home sphere can still be in these spaces, even if it is temporarily organizational. For the pastor it was being asked to help with household chores since he was “home.” This organizational space was inherently crossed with family and home spaces. Virtual environments can have that same sense of being a cross space, as something like a virtual meeting is in the work space but also is part of another space, like the home or a coffee shop. So the already existing distractions of the virtual space (such as app notifications) are added to by the distractions of the cross-spaced. While not the focus of her work, Wilhoit Larson (2020) offers important initial insights of how virtual environments act as places.

Applying space and place to virtual leadership and virtual spaces

When we consider the concept of virtuality as it impacts leadership, it raises particular concerns and avenues for examination related to sense of place. Since teams have differing levels of virtuality, the sense of place for a team is likely to be unique for different teams. For a team that is primarily face-to-face in how it organizes and functions, something like email may create a level of virtuality, but the virtual space might be a relatively minor part of their sense of place. The everyday activities that take place in that physical realm may be dominant in perceptions and understanding and thus their sense of place (Ropo and Salovaara, 2019). In such a circumstance, the processes of leadership that matter may primarily come in the physical environment. Email then might not play an important role, even if it offers an affordance for physically distant communication.

On the other hand, for a team that mostly interacts online, important everyday activities and most actions may take place online through email or information technology applications (Schmidt, 2019). This is likely to be particularly true when we talk about political leaders or CEOs with a large number of constituents. In such an environment, the virtual space could be where most meaningful communication takes place and email might be where the social relationships and interactions that make a feeling of place happen (Massey, 2005). As seen in Wilhoit Larson (2020), for some, email could be considered an important workspace and part of the organization and its space. Email provides a crucial affordance for connecting between physically distant employees. In such teams a leader who does not use email well or carefully could be very ineffective. If email is where leadership is engaged in, it cannot be ignored for those who want to engage in effective leadership.

Important to note is that the application that feels relevant to sense of place might vary across virtual teams and in fact a particular application might offer different affordances in different organizations. For some teams, Slack might be used the most heavily and seem most intertwined for everyday processes, as is seen in some technology companies today (Wynne, 2020). Email might be just the place for corporate or political junk mail. And these tools might feel like very different places based on the person’s experiences with the tool in different contexts.

For example, there have been allegations that at the party game company, Cards Against Humanity, Slack was used as a tool in harassing some employees (Wynne, 2020). For people that leave Cards Against Humanity for new organizations, future interactions through Slack might be tarnished by the trauma they experienced at the previous employer. Slack might seem like a harmful place to some workers while a neutral place to others. These differing interpretations and feelings will impact how the tool acts as a space influencing leadership and how people engage in leadership in that space. This also fits with the sociomateriality perspective, as the tool of Slack has very different meaning based on the current and past social contexts of the workforce (Orlikowski, 2007).

Virtual space is inherently a space crossed with a physical location an individual person is inhabiting. As seen in Wilhoit Larson (2020), a person’s home office may be an organizational workspace, yet it is still a space that is part of a personal home. The physical location may offer the person a strong sense of space with its own influences and social relationships outside of the organizational context.

With this description of basic aspects of how space and place interact with virtual spaces, we now turn to four major affordances these spaces can provide. These build on this current analysis and extend to others areas of consideration of these unique leadership-relevant spaces.

Sensemaking of virtual and organizational spaces by political leaders

A major role held by leaders is sensemaking for followers, giving them a vision for why things are happening and how they fit with existing beliefs and goals. Smircich and Morgan (1982) conceptualize this idea as leaders managing the meaning of organizationally relevant events for followers. Leaders, whether formal or not, are taking events and ideas and offering interpretations and frames that can be used to create common versions of reality for others to follow. These interpretations then impact how people react to events and what behaviors they then take, such as how to interpret an event like COVD-19 (Deye and Fairhurst, 2019; Wilson, 2020).

The virtual space and its related technology offers significant affordances for helping leaders communicate sensemaking and are a space that can impact how such messages are communicated and understood. Both are relevant in how virtual leadership is engaged in. This virtual space has been used significantly in how political leaders influence their followers and constituents.

One significant example is the use of social media, specifically Facebook Live, by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in response to COVD-19 (Wilson, 2020). Facebook Live offered her an affordance for communicating sensemaking information in a way that felt more personal and interactive than traditional methods like press conferences and press releases.

Ardern has a crucial role in sensemaking of how COVD-19 should be seen for citizens of New Zealand. Her framing of New Zealand’s COVD-19 response was a unified precautionary approach guided by the advice of scientists and health specialists (Wilson, 2020). The significant short term hardships were acknowledged but framed as needed for saving lives and ultimately faster economic recovery (Ardern, 2020a). Thus, the frame was on honesty and empathy for the difficulties to be experienced, but that they were needed for New Zealand’s best possible outcome (Wilson, 2020).

While Ardern did engage in traditional mediums for influence, a significant aspect of the campaign for framing COVD-19 was Ardern’s use of Facebook Live. Ardern appeared in live videos on Facebook giving information and updates on what was happening (Wilson, 2020). Ardern often wore casual clothes and appeared to be recording from her home in videos (Ardern, 2020b). Thus, while there are millions of citizens of New Zealand who would rarely have the chance to see the prime minister live, she seemed to be more intimately interacting with them in the troubling times taking place. This emphasized the focus on transparency and honesty in her message. Thus, Facebook Live helped her goal of sensemaking by providing affordance for suggesting honesty and transparency.

Ardern did not merely broadcast in a one sided manner to followers on Facebook but instead responded directly to comments and questions through Facebook (Ardern, 2020b). Thus, followers could feel their input was valued and their contributions were being respected by their prime minister, many commenting their support (Ardern, 2020b).

The virtual space found on Facebook allowed viewers to respond to Ardren in both comments and reactions. Looking at just one video (Ardern, 2020b), over 155,000 reactions (as of June 21st 2020) were made, with the vast majority the “heart” react or the “like” react, signaling likely agreement and support. This suggests to viewers that fellow citizens agree with Ardern’s content and sensemaking, potentially leading to even more support and conformity toward her message. The virtual space of Facebook offers tools and features that are an affordance of quantifying and illustrating such support. This can be contrasted with a virtual space like email, where a message sent to hundreds of people at an organization has no clear way of showing the support of those who were sent the email besides a reply all message back.

Sensemaking was a major affordance Twitter offered Donald Trump during his time as US president. Trump being banned from Twitter has been seen as a major blow to his ability to communicate with the world and his followers (Kafka, 2021). The impact of his sharing of allegations of election fraud in the 2020 US presidential election through Twitter was shown in research by Zignal Lab, which found that online misinformation and mentions of election fraud fell over 70% in the week since Trump was banned from Twitter (Dwoskin and Timberg, 2021). Research by Evanega and colleagues (2020) suggests Trump’s social media was the largest driver of COVID-19 misinformation with Trump mentioning 37% of the overall misinformation conversation. Both of these studies illustrate strongly how Trump used Twitter as a means to share with supporters and the public his interpretation of events and ideas, essential to his leadership sensemaking for US citizens.

Deye and Fairhurst (2019) look at Trump’s Twitter content as fitting around particular themes of truth versus post-truth, popular versus elites, and unity versus disunity. These categories all are ultimately about creating a vision of what reality is and how it should be interpreted. This also helps to create emotional reactions by others, influencing their own feelings toward Trump and the world, echoing existing research on how place and space have an emotional leadership component (Ropo et al., 2013). This is sensemaking for both his ardent supports and attempts to influence the more doubtful.

While the behavioral means of signaling differs, like Ardern, Trump suggests his Twitter provided frank and honest content. Trump discussed this idea related to “fake news.” He argued the mainstream media is highly slanted (usually against him) and that the information being shared is in fact false (Trump, 2017). The virtual space of Twitter is framed as a place where the truth can be told and it offered the affordance for Trump of getting his message out without the mainstream media contextualizing or modifying it.

As discussed with Ardern and Facebook, Twitter as a medium also provides information that could be used as affordances to suggest support and agreement. Trump in particular has engaged in sensemaking suggesting this social media support as meaningful. In one tweet with 115,000 likes and over 30,000 retweets, he explicitly suggested he does not need the mainstream media as his Twitter feed is followed by over 100 million people (Trump, 2017). In this case Trump was framing his follower count as a sign of his support, and thus that he should be listened too.

Other people on Twitter in their responses to the tweet accept this frame of the world but used it to delegitimize Trump. Lawrence O'Donnell (2017) of MSNBC responded from his own Twitter account that former US president Barack Obama had close to three times the number of followers on Twitter as then president Trump (2017). While O’Donnell was disagreeing with Trump, he was using the same frame of reference that the number of followers on Twitter was an important indicator of support. Another user suggested that for Trump’s number of followers the ratio of followers to actual tweet engagement was “embarrassing” (Corcoran, 2017). Both of these response tweets and the almost 40,000 other responses to Trump’s tweet have their own supporters and detractors. While O’Donnell and Corcoran were responding to the leader of their country, each of them in turn had people they were engaging in leadership with, trying to influence them, and having people argue with them in turn on their own sensemaking of Trump’s tweet. Twitter offers affordances for such sensemaking by leaders and ultimately affordances to others to dispute this sensemaking to the same audience.

US president Trump also used the retweet function as a way to legitimize the beliefs of his followers and show support. While the coverage of this was primarily about Trump retweeting tweets seen as problematic by others (Concha, 2020), it provides an affordance of a leader showing support for followers. As discussed above, much of misinformation on COVID-19 and election fraud shared by Trump was retweets from his followers, amplifying their comments. Twitter gave Trump the affordance to reward and recognize followers through his retweet.

The medium of Twitter also allowed Trump while president to send tweets where different parts of his message were focused on by different audiences. In July 2020, Trump posted a picture of himself wearing a mask, which was noted by some media outlets as one of the first times he has been seen wearing a mask (Trump, 2020). The tweet included Trump saying COVD-19 was the “Invisible China Virus,” that “many people say that it is Patriotic to wear a face mask” and that he was “your favorite president,” content that received different emphasis by different audiences. Framing COVD-19 as the fault of China offers sensemaking of who should be blamed for the disease. Defining face masks as “patriotic” despite his previous reluctance to wear one can be seen as a way of influencing people to wear them, and a number of news stories picked up that element and saw it as a positive action (Smith, 2020). Calling himself “your favorite president” is perhaps not a newsworthy statement, but certainly might play to his base of supporters who agree with that statement. Differing reactions to this tweet can be found in tweet responses to the post, with the emphasis placed on different aspects of the tweet (Trump, 2020). His single tweet and image thus received different emphasis based on who was interacting with it.

Across the above examples we see different content but similar leadership actions of sensemaking, with a social media site providing significant affordances for presenting and arguing the sensemaking message. The virtual platforms they are on help them to reach out to followers and the public to influence attention and framing of events and topics.

Social media can give numerical values for support or interest, offering an affordance for illustrating support of a message. This perceived social media support can be a more unconscious influence for a follower or it can be more salient when the leader points it out as “important” as seen by Donald Trump. As suggested by Collinge et al. (2010), the leader helps with place-making, what is the salient place for the organization or group and who is part of it. For Ardern and Trump this may be place-making for the virtual space on social media, but it is also place-making for their respective countries. The virtual environments also offer a frame by which to interpret the physical world people live in.

Space framing by social media influencers

The idea of leaders influencing followers can also extend to the realm of social media influencers, defined as online content creators who have a strong base of online followers of their social media due to some aspect of their personal appeal, skills, knowledge, or expertise (De Veirman et al., 2017). Influencers can vary widely in who their audience is and what relevant content they share, whether it is music, political insight, live video game streaming, recipes, fashion advice, comedy, or other niche interests. Gilani et al. (2020) classify influencers as social media leaders. This makes sense conceptually as influencers are engaging in leadership with their followers, trying to influence follower behavior. While they may not be directing work actions in the way a traditional hierarchical manager may do for subordinates, they are influencing followers’ behaviors toward the social media leader’s content and endorsed products. This influence on follower behavior is crucial for the influencer’s income from the channel and thus the economic viability of this social media leader role.

One area for difference between these social media leaders and many common types of leaders is that often their connection and appeal to followers comes exclusively from their online presence. Thus, social media leaders are almost exclusively virtual leaders, influencing followers through social media posts and content and creating a meaningful virtual space. This is the extreme end of the virtuality spectrum. Unlike a manager, social media leaders can only retain their followers through their online content, as abandoning the leader has little impact on follower job status or wellbeing. Being known exclusively through their online presence and with no hierarchical position power, one may see them as especially dependent on their followers. Work by Gilani et al. (2020) shows the significant degree of pressure that influencers feel that they must provide the content and behavior that their followers want. Social media leaders may try to influence followers but in turn are influenced by those followers in the content they create and focus on. Social media offers affordances for followers to engage in leadership and influence the social media leader.

To look at one example, the YouTube channel How To Cook That by Ann Reardon has over 4.3 million subscribers. The channel says it allows viewers to, “Have fun with me making creative dessert, cake and chocolate” (How to Cook That, 2020a). This description sets up a channel that is focused on the traditional cooking show topic of recipes, creating a space for her viewers. And the channel itself has a number of such videos of appealing looking cakes and the like. However, the channel has also become the home for a large amount of debunking of other online content, generally related to cooking. These videos often begin with Reardon specifically referencing the popularity of such debunking videos with viewers and that she is requesting viewers send in viral videos that they want her to “debunk” (How to Cook That, 2020b). She then names the user who sent in a video and tests to see if the cooking in the viral video actually works. Thus, a follower’s attention to the channel is rewarded and they are encouraged to continue their support of Reardon. YouTube provides an affordance for rewarding followers with attention and praise. In the videos themselves, the trusted social media leader is given the role of providing a frame to understand that viral video, engaging in vital sensemaking for the audience.

Social media leaders also look to frame for followers how they should interpret a virtual environment and its characteristics. For example, Reardon has created informational videos on the YouTube and Facebook algorithms and how they privilege cooking content that is inaccurate, but well optimized, for site suggestion algorithms (How to Cook That, 2020c). Thus, a framing is made that these algorithms benefit “bad” YouTube channels that only care about getting views while hurting “good” quality content providers like her channel. The average follower of her channel may not have even thought about how YouTube or Facebook recommends content until she brought up this concern and framed how they should see the virtual environments of these sites.

This framing related to social media algorithms for her followers benefits Reardon. Her Patreon for the channel, a site where people set up monthly donations to websites and creators, specifically cites changes to the algorithm on Facebook and YouTube hurting the amount of payments she gets for ads on those sites. Donating to the Patreon, thus, is a way to help the channel survive in the face of “unfair” algorithm changes on YouTube and Facebook (How to Cook That Patreon, 2020). The Patreon provides an affordance for Reardon of a monetary source not tied to YouTube and Facebook algorithms and is framed as a solution to the problem they both have. Whether or not the algorithm criticisms offered by Reardon are justified, they act as framing for her followers on how they should see these virtual environments and the algorithms that drive them.

For social media leaders, the place is exclusive to the virtual environment of the sites content is shared on and is defined and shaped by the leader (e.g., What YouTube channels are “good” or “bad” and should be supported or not). How the world “is” and “should be” is defined by the leader through this framing and sensemaking of their virtual environments. While political leaders like Ardren and Trump are leaders in the physical world as well, social media leaders only have virtual environments to offer them affordances to influence followers and create a meaningful place.

Leadership functions or substitution by algorithms in the gig economy

Gig economy tools offer their own affordances for leaders and workers. Looking at jobs like driving for Uber or completing household tasks on TaskRabbit, a traditional human leader or manager is often nowhere to be found. It is the application who acts like a leader, assigning jobs and often directing behavior such as routes to destination (Rosenblat and Stark, 2016). The rise of applications acting as substitutes for human managers, or in fact essentially being the hierarchical leader, has led to the concept of algorithmic leadership. Algorithmic leadership had been defined as Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications assigning tasks for workers, informing them the ways to do those tasks, determining compensation rates for tasks, and ultimately evaluating workers performance through collected data (Harms and Han, 2019). These represent tasks that are often seen as part of the role of managers or leaders (Yukl, 2013). The AI offers an affordance to take care of these leadership behaviors through the technology automatically, without a human leader needed to engage in them.

Effective leaders are said to have skills that are technical, interpersonal, and conceptual (Yukl, 2013). Algorithmic leadership involves all three. Technical skills include leading specialized activities by using technology to plan operations (Yukl, 2013). When gig workers receive their assignments, the app does just that—delegates tasks to individuals with the knowledge to complete the task. Interpersonal skills involve relationships and communication (Yukl, 2013). Through algorithms and the digital platform, the app functions as the leader when listening to workers as they rate customers. Additionally, gig work provides clear and consistent direction by communicating a route for completing the work and expectations on when work should be completed. The third set of skills includes conceptual skills that problem solve and analyze trends (Yukl, 2013). Conceptual skills are also mostly present in app work, as Artificial Intelligence predicts trends and utilizes data to make decisions.

Conceptual skills are demonstrated in the work flow process of an Uber ride from the perspective of an Uber driver. The driver has the app turned on when they are available to work. The algorithm will then periodically send the driver a job offer, giving the driver information on where the rider is but not where the rider wants to go (Rosenblat and Stark, 2016). Thus, we see here task assignment and conceptual skills. If the Uber driver accepts, they are shown a route to pick up the rider. Once the pickup is made, the application tells the driver the destination and the route to follow. Thus, the app is giving directions on how to accomplish the assigned task. Once the rider is dropped off, the rider is asked to rate the driver. Those ratings are then used by the app to make determinations of future work assignments. So, the app is evaluating the employee based on this data. The app can also make assessments of the driver by how often they accept work offers and other factors. This pattern of data will determine how often the driver gets offers in the future or even if they will be allowed to still be a driver.

As can be seen in the example above, the algorithm Uber runs on is providing many of the behaviors that a direct supervisor usually provides, including decision making and delegating work. Workers are motivated by incentives offered by the app or threats of less work or being removed from the driver pool entirely. These incentives and the information that the application possesses that is not shared with drivers give the application significant power and control over the driver workforce (Rosenblat and Stark, 2016). Thus, the application is a powerful leader with many subordinates.

While the Uber example focuses on rewards and punishments, algorithms can also be used in other ways to motivate workers like a leader does. This can include the app providing targeted messages related to workers’ interests to encourage working more hours. It might also include suggestions on how to be more successful (Harms and Han, 2019). The application possesses significant data about workers that could inform coaching like behavior personalized for particular workers. Training could be suggested based on this data. The application and its algorithm can be seen as an important agent in the space a worker feels for the organization, as Uber exists for the worker through the app, not any physical location. The application is both place and leader as it utilizes technical, interpersonal, and conceptual skills.

Shared leadership by gig workers in virtual spaces

To some degree, algorithmic leadership has an inherent assumption that no human manager or human leadership is needed by these gig workers due to the app taking on a leadership role and its related functions. While a gig economy company may think the application provides workers with all needed support and leadership behaviors, gig workers have built their own support networks and have emerging work leaders. Rosenblat (2018) noted that Uber drivers have online support groups that allow for drivers to share advice, answer each other’s questions, and provide warnings related to policies in a collaborative online space. We might see such third-party websites as providing affordances for workers to meet some of the needs for human interactions and guidance that go unmet from the Artificial Intelligence that acts as their day-to-day leader.

These interactions by workers on third-party sites could be seen as an example of shared leadership. Shared leadership is a reciprocal influence between leader and follower that creates joint responsibility and decision making when teams work together to achieve goals (Day et al., 2004; Hoch and Kozlowski, 2014; Pearce and Conger, 2003). Shared leadership is present as drivers learn and influence each other along with the larger organization. Ospina et al. (2020) built upon earlier shared leadership frameworks by identifying where leadership is occurring. In the example of Uber, shared leadership resides in the system where multiple dynamics interact. Similarly, Crevani et al.’s (2007) review of shared leadership literature identified that it can occur at an organizational level that allows the enterprise to benefit a larger number of people.

Rosenblat (2018) highlights that these online support groups are also able to influence the app, the company, and its policies. This is not unique to Uber, as Amazon Mechanical Turk also has similar third-party forums (Mturk Forum, 2020a) that allow for resources to be shared, survey takers to find community, and praise to be offered to others. Schmidt and Jettinghoff (2016) note that websites that create crowds, such as crowdsourcing sites and Amazon Mechanical Turk led to the creation of worker communities where shared leadership exists, since people try to motivate each other and influence how work is done. Furthermore, Petriglieri et al. (2019) found that gig workers foster connections with other gig workers to better manage their emotions and concerns about work.

Petriglieri et al. (2018) found through interviewing gig workers that they try to avoid social isolation in their roles by finding supportive collaborators in similar fields. Finding websites to offer mentorship of new employees is one way that gig workers seek to find connection in what may appear to be lonely work. Ihl et al. (2020) suggest that online communities help gig workers gain social support and stronger identification as a gig worker. Through their research, Ihl et al. (2020) found gig workers experienced more meaningfulness in their jobs through their online communities and amplified identification with their roles that indirectly increases their engagement in their roles. Gig economy workers see their roles as opportunities for self-improvement, including feeling valued and learning from others in a fun virtual space that allows workers to use their distinctive skill sets. This can lead to gig economy workers finding meaningfulness in their work (Kost et al., 2018). Thus, these worker-organized sites offer affordances to help increase workers connections to each other, which impacts how they feel about their work and identify with it.

Ultimately, the goals of these websites are to offer a virtual shared working space to gig workers, provide coaching and advice, and go beyond the training that the organization offers (Schwarz, 2015). Worker websites offer affordances for workers organizing, sharing information, and ultimately engaging in shared leadership. These sites can be seen as increasing motivation through affiliation.

Additionally, as seen in the Mturk online forums, employees vent frustrations, discuss ways to create the change needed for gig workers to be more successful in their roles, and increase camaraderie with each other (Mturk Forum, 2020a). As a result, motivation grows as this helps fulfill the need for control and influence. Most of these gig workers are considered contractors, work independently, and most do not receive the same kinds of benefits as full-time employees from organizations (Feffer, 2017). Through the use of online support groups, gig workers are able to motivate each other by providing hints of the day, affirmations, jokes, and gifs, as seen in the Mturk Forum called “Great HITS” (Mturk Forum, 2020b). These are all valuable elements of shared leadership as behaviors and attitudes are influenced by the group and these shared spaces. The applications serve as spaces for workers and these additional forums and sites serve as meaningful places as well, becoming part of the everyday activities that influence their work-related attitudes and behaviors (Ropo and Salovaara, 2019). These are important virtual spaces that workers inhabit that provide important affordances related to their job as a gig worker.

Discussion and implications

In this conceptual article, we set out to examine virtual environments as meaningful, socially constructed places that impact how leadership unfolds within them. We examined this through the existing research on place, space, and leadership. To help examine how these virtual places are used for leadership, we applied an affordance perspective, focusing on the leadership goals that the technology helps facilitate, drawing on relevant real word examples. As shown above, virtual spaces are a major aspect of work today, with almost every leadership situation somewhere on the scale of virtuality.

Virtual spaces and related tools help to fill leadership needs, both for leaders to use and for computer applications, such as algorithms, to act as leader substitutes. We highlighted four areas of affordances virtual environments provide: sensemaking, space framing, algorithms performing leadership functions, and tools for shared leadership among workers. The affordances of being able to communicate across long distances and work in almost any location also figured into many of these areas.

The analysis presented here offers implications for practice, as well as points in the direction of future research needed to better understand this important space where modern day leadership takes place.