I don't believe that a different form of leadership is required. There have never evolved different leadership theories that apply to different situations and many leading scholars are against the idea that leadership principles fundamentally differ between situations. Of course each situation requires a tailored approach/style, but they are so varied that "forms" have not developed. I would speculate that virtual leaders would need to be particularly good at relationships because of the lack of contact and the need for a personal touch. A heavily-oriented task-focused leader would only succeed if the team was very competent and motivated... and basically did not require leadership.

I don't believe that a different form of leadership is required. There have never evolved different leadership theories that apply to different situations and many leading scholars are against the idea that leadership principles fundamentally differ between situations. Of course each situation requires a tailored approach/style, but they are so varied that "forms" have not developed. I would speculate that virtual leaders would need to be particularly good at relationships because of the lack of contact and the need for a personal touch. A heavily-oriented task-focused leader would only succeed if the team was very competent and motivated... and basically did not require leadership.

I don't believe that a different form of leadership is required. There have never evolved different leadership theories that apply to different situations and many leading scholars are against the idea that leadership principles fundamentally differ between situations. Of course each situation requires a tailored approach/style, but they are so varied that "forms" have not developed. I would speculate that virtual leaders would need to be particularly good at relationships because of the lack of contact and the need for a personal touch. A heavily-oriented task-focused leader would only succeed if the team was very competent and motivated... and basically did not require leadership.

I guess a lot depends on whether your question is really asking whether different forms of leadership can/may exist in online spaces or whether leadership is practised differently within them.

I think the latter is probably easier to answer - just as we communicate differently in online spaces, effective leadership online also requires specific competences and skills, in different measure and combination, from the skills required of leaders in face-to-face environments. Ghislaine Caulat (erstwhile at Ashridge) has been doing some very interesting work on virtual leadership and identifies some of the skills that leaders need (http://www.ashridge.org.uk/Website/Content.nsf/redirect?openagent&GoToDb=%3CNOTES_IC_DB_PATH%20/%3E&GotoPage=%2FwFARATT%2FVirtual%2520Leadership%2F%24File%2FVirtualLeadership.pdf). This is something I am interested in myself as I am researching leadership development in virtual worlds.

The question of whether different forms of leadership actually exist is more complex, not least because an answer may depend on our understanding of what we mean by "online environment". If we broaden the term to include immersive online spaces such as virtual worlds, eg Second Life and World of Warcraft, I think new forms of leadership *may* exist (or can be constructed) because identity and presence in such worlds are arguably different.

As you know, we inhabit the same real world space at Greenwich - I would be interested in continuing the conversation there!

The Relationship Between Trust, Virtual Communities and e-Commerce: A Semantic Study)

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2504508