The Impactoftechnologyon Emergent Leadershipbehaviorsand Perceptions in SRI Lanka

Organizations are increasingly making use of technology to facilitate collaboration and communication within teams. Such computer-mediated work arrangements are not limited by geography and often require new work practices including more proactive individual participation – or emergent leadership. While emergent leadership has been studied extensively in North America, much less work has been done in other cultures. In this paper we report the findings from a longitudinal study of emergent leadership behavior in computer-supported project teams in Sri Lanka with special attention paid to the role of gender. Also, the relationship between actual leadership behaviors and leadership perceptions is investigated. Similar to North American studies we found that technology helped level the playing field for women enabling them to engage in emergent leadership behavior. Further, women engaging in both taskand socially-oriented leadership behaviors were positively perceived by team mates.