Purpose The COVID-19 pandemic has, besides the health concerns, caused an unprecedented social and economic crisis that has particularly hit service industries hard Due to extensive safety measures, many service employees have to work remotely to keep service businesses running With limited literature on leadership and virtual work in the service context, this paper aims to report on leadership effectiveness regarding employees' work performance in virtual settings brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic Design/methodology/approach Drawing on the input-process-outcome (IPO) framework, this research investigates the effectiveness of leadership on service employees' work performance mediated by work-related tension, autonomy, and group cohesiveness Furthermore, this study explores moderating effects of the service provider's digital maturity To test the derived model, the authors collected survey data from 206 service employees who, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, unexpectedly had to transform to a virtual work environment The authors analyzed the data using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) Findings The results indicated that it took task- and relation-oriented leadership behavior to maintain service employees' work performance in a virtual environment during crisis situations Further, results indicated mediating effects of service employees' individual job autonomy and team cohesiveness;surprisingly, work-related tension did not impact employees' work performance Results offered service businesses guidance on how to effectively lead in times of crisis when service employees predominantly work in virtual environments Originality/value This is the first empirical study to show how leadership affects service employees' work performance in a virtual work environment during crisis times Thus, the study contributes to the scarce literature on the impact of leadership in service firms that have to operate in such a setting

中文翻译：

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领导力在危机引发的数字化转型中至关重要：如何在COVID-19大流行期间有效领导服务员工

目的COVID-19大流行除引起健康问题外，还引发了前所未有的社会和经济危机，特别是严重打击了服务行业。由于采取了广泛的安全措施，许多服务员工必须远程工作以保持服务业务的运转，而有关领导力的文献有限和服务中的虚拟工作，本文旨在报告COVID-19大流行设计/方法/方法在虚拟环境中对员工工作绩效的领导效力，并借鉴输入过程-结果（IPO）框架，本研究调查了与工作相关的紧张感，自主性和团队凝聚力所介导的领导对服务员工的工作绩效的有效性。此外，本研究探讨了服务提供者的调节作用数字成熟度为了测试派生模型，作者从206名服务员工那里收集了调查数据，由于COVID-19大流行，他们意外地不得不转换为虚拟工作环境。作者使用偏最小二乘结构方程模型对数据进行了分析（结果表明，在危机情况下，在虚拟环境中维持服务型员工的工作绩效需要采取任务型和关系型领导行为，而且，结果表明了服务型员工个人工作自主性和团队凝聚力的中介作用。令人惊讶的是，与工作相关的紧张并没有影响员工的工作绩效结果为服务企业提供指导，帮助他们在服务员工主要在虚拟环境中工作时如何有效地在危机中发挥领导作用原创性/价值这是第一项实证研究，显示了领导力如何在危机期间影响虚拟员工在虚拟工作环境中的服务绩效因此，本研究为有关在这样的环境中运营的服务公司中领导力影响的文献提供了帮助