A Brave New World for Organizational Leaders: Understanding and Mastering E-Leadership

The effects of the ongoing digital revolution have been profound in terms of changing social interactions, business models, methods of political participation, and learning platforms, among others. The digital revolution has also changed leaders’ interactions with followers enormously via information and communication technologies (ICTs), but this has been much less studied and is poorly understood. A major reason for this lack of progress has been the inability to produce an operational definition of e-leadership that spans telework, team, and enterprise settings, and that also takes into account the complex interaction of traditional and e-leadership. This talk will propose an operational definition of e-leadership based on six factors (or broad e-competencies). The discussion is relevant to all organizational settings—education, business, public administration, non-profit, etc.

Dr. Montgomery (Monty) Van Wart has worked in higher education in various capacities for 30 years, nearly always with administrative roles. He served as the Interim Dean of the College of Business and Public Administration at California State University San Bernardino where he was also a longtime chair of the Department of Public Administration.  Prior to that he was the Chair of the Department of Public Administration at the University of Central Florida. He was also a Senior Research Fellow at KU Leuven (formerly Catholic University) in Belgium (2012-13) and a visiting professor at Rutgers (2013). He is currently a visiting professor at the University of Hong Kong.

As a scholar, Dr. Van Wart has over 100 publications. His primary research frequently appears in the best journals in the field; for example he has eight refereed articles in Public Administration Review.  His eleven books include Dynamics of Leadership (2nd edition, Choice Award for Outstanding Academic Title), Leadership in Public Organizations (2nd edition), Human Resource Management in Public Service (with others, 5th edition, Best Public Sector HR Book by ASPA), Leadership and Culture (with Hondeghem and Schwella), Business-Government Relations (with Ni), Leadership Across the Globe (with Gupta), and Changing Public Sector Values.  He has well over 2500 Google citations. His research areas are administrative and business leadership, human resource management, training and development, administrative values and ethics, organization behavior, and general management. He helped redesign the Code of Ethics for the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA), is the Associate Editor for Public Performance and Management Review and also serves on numerous editorial boards. He has received numerous awards for research.

This event is part of the Whitaker Distinguished Lecture Series