Inclusive leadership in global virtual teams: overcoming cultural diversity and geographical distance challenges to enhance belongingness, uniqueness, accessibleness, and usefulness

This chapter presents an examination of global virtual leadership for inclusion. It emphasizes the need for a shift in inclusive leadership practices to address the requirements of virtual interactions, particularly within an international context. By integrating concepts from existing scholarly works, we propose a unified framework that encompasses global leadership, virtual leadership, and inclusion. This framework aims to comprehend the complexities involved and focuses on the needs and viewpoints of a diverse, international workforce. We refer to a four-by-four matrix inspired by past research, thereby integrating individual- and group-focused inclusion with relationship- and task-oriented global virtual leadership. This allows us to classify and develop ideas for leadership behaviors that cater to the four scenarios. The findings from this investigation lay the groundwork for future research and offer practical insights, including fostering social engagement in virtual settings, adapting communication to cultural differences, enabling transparent decision-making, and using digital tools to support inclusion across geographically dispersed teams.