Leadership challenges and behaviours in the information technology sector during COVID-19: a comparative study of leaders from India and the U.S

ABSTRACT This study aims to compare the leadership challenges and behaviours in the information technology (IT) sector in India and the United States during the current COVID-19 pandemic. Through a basic exploratory qualitative study, we examined the challenges faced by leaders in both countries and how they evolved their leadership behaviours to meet employee needs and maintain business continuity. Even though situations resulting from the national lockdown and remote work varied across the two countries, leaders faced similar challenges with employee productivity, increased isolation, teamwork, client interactions, and employee’s work life balance. Our findings confirm that leaders from heterogeneous countries exhibit homogeneous behaviours. Leaders invested in increasing their virtual presence, demonstrates exemplary behaviour, and practiced distributed leadership to enable seamless communication among team members.