E-leadership Using WhatsApp, A Challenge for Navy Organizations: An Empirical Study

Abstract

Leadership is a fundamental characteristic of naval–military strategy. However, the development of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has led to the leadership being complemented by an emerging paradigm called e-leadership. Therefore, it is interesting to evaluate this paradigm in a naval–military organization where they are currently using WhatsApp as a tool to issue and follow up on dispositions. Considering the perspectives of technology, communication, and trust proposed by Avolio (Organ. Dyn. 2003, [3]), He et al. (E-leadership strategy in virtual organizations and virtual teams, 2008, [8]) and Liu et al. (Leadersh. Organ. Dev. J. 39(7):826–843, 2018, [10]), a survey is applied to Lieutenant Commanders and Lieutenants of the organization. The results evidence a questionable use of e-leadership over WhatsApp. However, e-leadership fails to be effective due to the conflicts that are complicated to mitigate even in the traditional leadership of the organization.