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Abstract
The purpose of the current study was to extend prior scholarship by examining how employees who telecommute perceive their supervisor's leadership style and the subsequent outcomes. Specifically, the way in which leadership style influences employees' perceptions of their supervisors' communication competence and communication satisfaction with their supervisor. Employees' job satisfaction and organizational commitment was also assessed. Participants included 157 full time telecommuters from a variety of organizations across the United States. The findings suggest that supervisors in the virtual workplace engaged in task oriented more than relational oriented leadership style. Also, task oriented leadership served as the greatest predictor of the communication satisfaction, job satisfaction, and the organizational commitment of telecommuters. Recommendations for practitioners were also provided indicating that more might be done to enhance the task related leadership competencies of supervisors in the virtual work setting.
Introduction
The emergence of technology in the workplace has provided both large and small organizations with the ability to compete on a global scale, while at the same time, changed the way in which organizations interact and coordinate activities with customers, suppliers, and its members. These changes involve the substitution of everyday business activities which took place through face-to-face (FtF) interactions with electronic information exchanged through the use of computer technology (Straub & Watson, 2001). Further, Herrmann (2006) argued that with the growth of computer technology in the workplace, mediated communication has become infused into nearly every business communication context. The introduction of computer technologies into the organizational context has also brought about a number of changes to both the organization and its members by altering core elements of the organization, such as its structure, culture, and performance (Jackson, Poole, & Kuhn, 2002).
These technological advances have also allowed for a greater level of autonomy in the workplace, such as the ability to work away from the office. This work arrangement is being embraced by more and more companies who intend on capitalizing on the benefits of technology while minimizing costly resources such as office space (Wilkes, Frolick, & Urwiler, 1994). This alternative form of work has historically been called telecommuting, telework, or virtual work, which is broadly denned as "working at one's home or another location where employees use computers and communication technology to communicate...