Place and space concepts help to illuminate how the place an organization inhabits and related beliefs have a significant impact on leadership processes. While places often have a physical presence, a sense of place is socially constructed by those who interact in it. This article offers analysis of how virtual environments can be seen as socially constructed places and how that conceptualization impacts leadership, both in the environment acting as a leadership substitute and how people engage in virtual leadership. This conceptual analysis occurs by integrating existing literature on space, place, technology affordances, and virtual leadership, as well as analyzing current virtual work environments and virtual leaders. We illustrate how virtual places can offer affordances for leadership sensemaking of political leaders, virtual place-making by social media influencers, algorithmic leadership, and shared leadership in the gig economy. We close the article by discussing how current leaders can consider the affordances of virtual environments and needed future needed research.

场所和空间概念有助于阐明组织所处的场所和相关信念对领导过程的重大影响。虽然场所通常有实体存在，但场所感是由在其中互动的人在社会上构建的。本文分析了虚拟环境如何被视为社会构建的场所以及这种概念化如何影响领导力，无论是在作为领导替代者的环境中还是人们如何参与虚拟领导。这种概念分析是通过整合关于空间、地点、技术可供性和虚拟领导力的现有文献，以及分析当前的虚拟工作环境和虚拟领导者来进行的。我们说明了虚拟场所如何为政治领导人的领导意义构建提供启示，社交媒体影响者的虚拟场所营造、算法领导力和零工经济中的共享领导力。我们通过讨论当前的领导者如何考虑虚拟环境的可供性以及未来需要的研究来结束文章。