Leadership in virtual teams: A multilevel perspective Chenwei Liao School of Human Resources and Labor Relations, Michigan State University, 368 Farm Lane Room 429, East Lansing, MI 48824, United States article info abstract Available online xxxx Understanding leadership functioning in virtual teams becomes critical as organizations in- creasingly use dispersed teams for talent acquisition. In the current article I present a prelim- inary model that explicates how task- and relationship-oriented leader behaviors influence team and individual processes and outcomes in virtual teams. Further, I discuss cross-level re- lationships between virtual team and individual processes, as well as the boundary effects of contextual factors (i.e., task complexity, task interdependence, and virtuality) in virtual leader- ship functioning. © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Leadership Virtual teams Virtual leadership Multilevel Team processes Leader-member exchange (LMX) 1. Introduction “Virtual teams are here, and they are here to stay.”—Bell and Kozlowski (2002, p. 45) The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) conducted a survey of 379 HR professionals, revealing that nearly half of the polled member firms use virtual teams in their organizations (Minton-Eversole, 2012). The popularity of virtual teams in modern organizations is attributed to successes of structuring work around teams, advancements of information and telecommu- nication technology, globalization and increasing pressures to compete for talent around the world, desires to maintain flexibility and agility while reducing operating costs, and the need to share knowledge and information efficiently (Townsend, DeMarie, & Hendrickson, 1998). Virtual teams can benefit both employees and the employer (Maruping & Agarwal, 2004). Employees may enjoy the flexibility of conducting their work in far-flung locations, ranging from their employer offices to client sites and from hotel rooms to their homes. Such flexibility may facilitate the balance of employees' work and life and potentially increase their satisfaction with the job. While employees may find it flexible in a virtual work environment, the employer tends to benefit from the enhanced ability to work with experts from around the globe. Thanks to the advanced communication technology, the employer may bring subject matter experts from another part of the world to work in a virtual team, which may be unrealistic in traditional face-to-face teams (Maruping & Agarwal, 2004). Even co-located teams have increasingly incorporated technologies that facilitate virtual com- munication in team member interactions (Moser & Axtell, 2013). Almost every team has some elements that allow it to be con- sidered partially virtual (Al-Ani, Horspool, & Bligh, 2011; Cheshin, Kim, Nathan, Ning, & Olson, 2013; Hardin, Fuller, & Davison, 2007; Kirkman & Mathieu, 2005; Zigurs, 2003). All the aforementioned benefits are based on the assumption that virtual teams are well managed. Indeed, leadership effective- ness plays a pivotal role in the success of virtual teams (Bell & Kozlowski, 2002; Morgeson, DeRue, & Karam, 2010; Zigurs, 2003). Human Resource Management Review xxx (2016) xxx–xxx E-mail address: cliao@msu.edu. HUMRES-00585; No of Pages 12 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.hrmr.2016.12.010 1053-4822/© 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Human Resource Management Review journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/humres Please cite this article as: Liao, C., Leadership in virtual teams: A multilevel perspective, Human Resource Management Review (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.hrmr.2016.12.010