Abstract
This Doctor of Business Administration thesis explores the competencies necessary for effective virtual leadership in a Chinese school (Jurong Country Garden School), where managerial and pedagogical activities transitioned to online platforms during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020-2022) and have continued to influence post-pandemic organisational practices. Rather than presenting pandemic-era virtual work as the current norm, this study considers virtual work as a historically bounded but transformative experience that reshaped leaders' decision-making, communication, and expectations within China’s high power-distance, collectivist educational culture.
The research addresses three primary questions: (1) the challenges faced by school leaders in virtual environments and their strategies for overcoming them; (2) the specific competencies required for effective virtual leadership; and (3) the role of these competencies in effectively managing team performance in virtual work environments.
Utilising a qualitative single-case study design, this research involved semi-structured interviews with 11 senior academic and managerial superintendents, purposely selected from the school's sampling frame of 59 potential participants to ensure representativeness across roles, experience, and diversity. Interviews were conducted in Mandarin by a trained, neutral “critical friend” to reduce power-distance bias, with data analysed using NVivo through iterative bilingual coding. Member checks, pilot testing, reflexive journaling, and translation audits were implemented to ensure methodological rigour and minimise insider-researcher bias.
Thematic analysis revealed eight interconnected domains of virtual leadership competence: (1) communicative clarity and digitally mediated trust-building; (2) digital literacy and strategic use of educational technologies; (3) humanistic care and emotional support; (4) adaptive decision-making; (5) boundary management and workload regulation; (6) distributed and collaborative leadership practices; (7) performance supervision and accountability; and (8) professional learning practices for continuous improvement. These findings highlight that virtual leadership is a multifaceted, context-specific practice where relational sensitivity, technological proficiency, and adaptive judgement interact synergistically.
This thesis contributes to the theoretical understanding of virtual leadership by extending contingency and transformational leadership perspectives, illustrating how virtual work reshapes leadership enactment in Chinese schools, while delivering a culturally embedded competency model grounded in leaders’ reported experiences. Empirically, it offers a competency framework grounded in the lived experiences of leaders navigating sustained digitally mediated work arrangements. Practically, it provides evidence-based recommendations for leadership development, digital strategy planning, and organisational support systems as schools move toward hybrid or remote modes of operation.
Limitations are acknowledged, including its single-site focus, reliance on leader perceptions without follower perspectives, and the interpretive risks inherent in cross-language translation. Future research could employ multi-site comparative designs, mixed-methods approaches, and dual-translator verification to refine and test the proposed competency model across diverse educational settings.