Comparison of Traditional Leadership and E-Leadership: A Study of Organizational Effectiveness in Today's Scenario

Abstract

Working and leading virtually have become a growing concern and hence a growing area of focus in the last few years, generated by an increased care for the environment, a concern for a better life quality, the need to cut costs and/or the desire to welcome Generation Y (people born in the '80s who have grown up with all virtual media) into the corporate world. The term leadership has been probably the most talked about subject. Decades of academic analysis have given us more than 350 definitions of Leadership. Literally thousands of empirical interpretations of leaders have been conducted in the last 75 years alone but no
clear and unequivocal understanding exists as to what distinguishes leaders from nonleaders. In fact the word leadership appeared in the Oxford dictionary as late as the eighteenth century. Multiple interpretations of leadership exist but each remaining incomplete and wholly inadequate with regard to the issues. The time has come to not to talk of leadership in abstract terms but in concrete and measurable terms. Leadership has to be demystified, brought down from its lofty pedestrian, dissected and finally understood by the common man. Now as they say war is too important to be left to the Generals, likewise, leadership in an organization is too important a subject to be left behind to intuition, chance, whims and fancies of an individual.