Inclusion from Afar: The Impact of Virtual Work on the Effects of Inclusive Leadership
Open AccessMany of today’s organizations operate in a global context where leaders are challenged by increasing demographic diversity in the workforce and more reliance on communication technologies and virtual work arrangements. Recently, there have been calls for a better understanding of how diversity and inclusion can be properly managed amidst the widespread digitalization of work. The purpose of this dissertation is to understand how virtual work environments help or hinder inclusive leaders to promote performance and reduce discrimination. A sample of 244 adults working full-time in the U.S. was recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk. Results from an online questionnaire suggest the ability of inclusive leadership to improve performance is impeded by some but not all aspects of virtual work. For example, inclusive leadership is most effective for improving follower task performance and helping behavior when leaders and followers work from the same location (e.g., in the same office) but is not impacted by the overall extent to which leaders and followers rely on technology to communicate. In addition, both inclusive leadership and workgroup inclusion were unrelated to workgroup discrimination. Taken together, these findings provide novel implications for future research on the role of virtuality in workplace inclusion and the impact of inclusion on discrimination. They also offer insight into the extent to which organizations should consider the impact of virtual work arrangements on diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies.
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