Knowledge Management Research & Practice

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COVID-19 leadership challenges in knowledge

work

Kathrin Kirchner , Christine Ipsen & John Paulin Hansen

To cite this article: Kathrin Kirchner , Christine Ipsen & John Paulin Hansen (2021): COVID-19
leadership challenges in knowledge work, Knowledge Management Research & Practice, DOI:
10.1080/14778238.2021.1877579

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KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT RESEARCH & PRACTICE
https://doi.org/10.1080/14778238.2021.1877579

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

COVID-19 leadership challenges in knowledge work

Kathrin Kirchner , Christine Ipsen and John Paulin Hansen
DTU Management, Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby, Denmark

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Considerable attention has been paid to employees’ experiences when working from home Received 30 May 2020
(WFH) during the COVID-19 pandemic, including their well-being and performance. However, Accepted 11 January 2021
less attention has been paid to how managers experience WFH and how this may challenge KEYWORDS
them in their new role as distance managers. This study investigates how managers of knowl­ Managers; knowledge work;
edge work experienced distance management during COVID-19. An international survey was working from home;
distributed in the first weeks of the Danish national lockdown and collected data in spring distance management; well-
2020. Based on Danish responses from 1053 employees and 290 managers of knowledge work, being; COVID-19; challenges
who had limited prior experience in distance management, our analysis revealed 12 items
where managers found their work during lockdown to be more challenging than employees
did. The implications are that research and practice should consider the well-being and
performance consequences of WFH not only for employees but also for managers, as their
experiences differ, and the managers express challenges in their leadership.

1. Introduction
Employees’ health, resilience and well-being when
working across distances is critical to sustain opera­
tions and ensure performance (Poulsen & Ipsen,
2017). While distance work and management are an
integrated part of many jobs (Cropper et al., 2008;
Verburg et al., 2013), distance work, dispersed teams
and distance management were new experiences for
the majority of employees and managers when coun­
tries across the world implemented lockdowns due to
the COVID-19 pandemic during spring 2020 (Vargas,
2020). The increasing interest in the effect of working
from home (WFH) on employees, their productivity
and their well-being during the pandemic has heigh­
tened the need to understand how managers should
manage and lead across distances to support their
employees’ mental health and performance (Adenle,
2020; Giurge & Bohns, 2020; World Health
Organisation, 2020).
Studies on WFH, i.e. telework (Bailey & Kurland, 20
02; Hesketh & Cooper, 2019; Kurkland & Bailey, 1999),
shows that it has advantages such as flexibility, conveni­
ence, autonomy, trust empowerment and increased pro­
ductivity. However, it may also create a sense of loneliness
and feelings of isolation (Hertel et al., 2005; Stich, 2020).
Hence WFH comes with both advantages and
disadvantages.
The ability to show trust and to empower people is
important in distance management to allow employees
to perform at their best (Hesketh & Cooper, 2019; Jones
& Gorell, 2012). Good performance also requires good
communication skills, the ability to assess needs and
create a sense of belonging and proximity, including the
ability to adopt different approaches depending on the
employee’s situation (Hesketh & Cooper, 2019; Jones &
Gorell, 2012; Poulsen & Ipsen, 2017).
Knowledge workers’ tasks in distributed teams largely
consist of processing, sharing and/or creating knowledge
and information (Bosch-Sijtsema et al., 2009), so knowl­
edge sharing within an organisation becomes challen­
ging when WFH (Van der Lippe & Lippényi, 2020).
Moreover, if knowledge workers cannot work autono­
mously, are unfamiliar with communication technolo­
gies, or cannot maintain good social relations with their
colleagues, they may be less productive while WFH
(Bolisani et al., 2020; Gurstein, 2001; Jackson, 2001).
Knowledge-intensive work is dependent on “human
capital” that cannot be managed and controlled like
traditional physical capital (Alvesson, 2004); thus,
knowledge workers must be managed carefully and
offered good working conditions and employment con­
ditions (Newell et al., 2009).
During the COVID-19 pandemic, practice and
research have generously proposed ideas for how orga­
nisations can support their employees in the new ways of
working during turbulent times to avoid isolation and
support their well-being. While the focus during the
COVID-19 pandemic has been on the well-being and
performance of employees WFH and their experiences,
less attention has been paid to how managers of knowl­
edge work experience WFH compared to employees. As
organisations discuss if and how to continue WFH post
COVID-19 (Editors note, 2020; Gartner, 2020; The
European Commission’s Science and Knowledge

CONTACT Kathrin Kirchner kakir@dtu.dk DTU Management, Technical University of Denmark, Akademivej 358, Kgs., Lyngby 2800, Denmark
© Operational Research Society 2021.
2 K. KIRCHNER ET AL.
Centre, 2020), it is fundamental to know how managers
experienced the sudden transition to distance manage­
ment, and what changes will be required for them and
their organisation to lead as distance managers.
The aim of this study is to investigate how managers
of knowledge work have experienced distance manage­
ment during COVID-19 compared to employees. The
study provides insight into our understanding of the
effects of WFH among different organisational actors.
The study may contribute to understanding how organi­
sations are to learn from and respond to these experi­
ences, which is key when managers are to implement and
lead new ways of working that come with the increase of
telework and WFH. This paper offers an insight into the
experiences of WFH among Danish managers of knowl­
edge work compared to Danish knowledge workers, and
the specific conditions causing these experiences. First,
the materials and methods section provides a detailed
description of the study. Second, the results are pre­
sented, followed by a discussion and conclusion.
2. Materials and methods
We conducted an international online survey includ­
ing 23 questions covering positive and negative experi­
ences with WFH as well as demographics. We
employed a five-point Likert scale (from 1 = strongly
disagree to 5 = strongly agree) but also included ques­
tions with nominal answers as well as open questions.
An overview of the Likert-scaled variables that were
included in the study is shown in Table 2.
The Danish government announced a national lock­
down on the 11th of March 2020, and kindergartens and
primary schools gradually opened beginning in mid-
April (Anderson et al., 2015; Statsministeriet, 2020).
We collected the Danish data from the 21st of March
until the 11th of May, when shopping centres, restau­
rants, schools for older children and other facilities began
to re-open. We distributed the survey via social media
platforms and emails. Data were thus collected by non-
probabilistic snowball sampling. We did not restrict our
data collection to specific companies or branches as all
companies were affected by the pandemic situation due
to the lockdown.
We applied descriptive statistics as well as t-tests to
describe the significant differences between managers
and employees. We received answers from 290 Danish
managers and 1053 Danish employees, so the total
number of answers was 1343. The survey did not
distinguish between managers on different manage­
ment levels. A manager is herein every person who
reports to have managerial tasks. Table 1 shows the
demographic characteristics of the sample. The major­
ity of answers came from knowledge workers, who can
perform their tasks in substantial autonomy, as the
majority possessed a university degree. The table
shows that managers were a little older than employees,
which also contributes to the number of children they
have. A Chi2-test revealed a dependence between posi­
tion as manager/employee and the number of children
under 15 at home (Chi2 = 18.318, p = .000), but this
correlation is low (Cramer’s V = .117). In addition,
managers have a slightly higher level of education.
To gain insights into the respondents’ personal
experiences, the survey included the ability to provide
additional comments about specific challenges they
faced and their experiences of the current situation.
We then restricted the analysis of the comments to
those that clearly referred to tasks usually performed
by managers. Issues that were also mentioned by
employees (e.g., taking care of small children, addi­
tional home-schooling or longer working hours) were
not considered. We conducted a content analysis
(Bryman, 2004; Denscombe, 2010, p. 313) of the per­
sonal experiences to reveal what the managers por­
trayed as challenging through their comments. The
data were then clustered to order and synthesise
them into central topics.
3. Results
3.1. Comparing managers and employees
We first conducted a t-test to investigate what distin­
guishes the situations and perceptions of Danish man­
agers from those of Danish employees. Table 2 gives
an overview of all included positive and negative
experiences perceived by both managers and employ­
ees and lists the significant differences in the results
based on the t-test.
Both managers and employees feel equally well
prepared for WFH, and they try to maintain good
relationships with colleagues. However, managers
and employees significantly differ in their positive
experiences of WFH, as managers agree less that they
can avoid long meetings and they can be less flexible.
For the negative experiences, managers spend more
time on the computer, work longer and perceive their
work–life situation and their work as more demanding
compared to the employees (see Figure 1).
Managers are less concerned that they will not have
enough work to do from home, and they seem to be
better equipped in their home offices. However, both
managers and employees would like to see their col­
leagues more often.
3.2. Qualitative analysis of managers’ challenges
Using content analysis (Bryman, 2004), focussing on
managers and their specific tasks only, we identified
six different challenging issues for Danish managers,
which are reported in Table 3.
Most managers reported that the main challenges to be
“organisation of work” and “communication with the
 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT RESEARCH & PRACTICE 3

Table 1. Respondents’ overview.

Managers Employees
(N = 290) (N = 1053)
Variables N % N %
Gender Female 158 54.5 715 67.9
Male 130 44.8 325 30.9
Other/missing 2 0.6 13 1.2
Household Live alone 59 20.3 319 30.3
Live with 1 person together 81 27.9 342 32.5
Live with more than 1 person together 145 77.9 377 35.8
Missing 5 1.7 15 1.4
Children below the age of 15 at home No children 152 52.4 649 61.6
1 child 69 23.8 148 14.1
2 or more than 2 67 23.1 252 23.9
Missing 2 0.7 4 0.4
Age 18–20 0 1 0.1
21–30 9 3.1 103 9.8
31–40 43 14.8 229 21.7
41–50 102 35.2 296 28.1
51–60 105 36.2 318 30.2
Above 60 31 10.7 101 9.6
Missing 0 5 0.5
Highest Level of Education Primary 0 3 0.3
Secondary 3 1.0 29 2.8
Vocational Training 7 2.4 108 10.3
Associate Degree 8 2.8 88 8.4
Bachelor 46 15.9 176 16.7
Master 157 54.1 438 41.6
Doctorate 66 22.8 190 18.0
Other/missing 3 1.0 21 2.0
Work from home expe-rience before COVID-19 Never 15 5.2 171 16.2
Less than 1 day per week 200 69.0 628 59.6
One day per week 40 13.8 173 16.4
More than 1 day per week 35 17.2 81 7.8

Table 2. Variables included in the study, mean values and significant differences between managers and employees based on
t-test results.
Mean value managers Mean value employees
Category Variable t-value (sign.) (N = 290) (N = 1053)
Positive I do not have to spend a long time in meetings T = 4.143 3.19 3.37
Experience (sig .000)
I can take a break when I like to T = 6.728 3.45 3.77
(sig .000)
I have no one looking over me T = 2.678 2.66 2.84
(sig .008)
The information that I have gotten from my work makes me feel well n.s. 3.46 3.45
prepared for working at home
I get time to focus on my work without interruptions from other n.s. 3.43 3.55
people
I get a chance to break my old habits and change routines n.s. 3.41 3.44
It is easier to get in contact with people than normal n.s. 2.87 2.89
I can keep a good relationship with my colleagues when I am working n.s. 3.23 3.25
from home
Negative I need a physical equipment to do my work, which I do not have T = 2.825 3.03 .3.29
Experience access to at home (sig .005)
I find it difficult to keep focused on work when I am at home T = 3.015 2.65 2.87
(sig .002)
I get disturbed by other people in my home T = −2.424 2.97 2.74
(sig .015)
I don’t know what kind of work I should do T = 3.438 2.28 2.49
(sig .001)
I am afraid that there will be not enough work that I can do from T = 4.981 (sig 2.58 2.80
home .000)
The physical conditions at my home do not afford a good working T = 3.018 3.69 3.90
environment (sig .003)
I feel tied to my computer to a greater extent than at my workplace T = −4.458 3.76 3.52
(sig .000)
My current work and life situation is more demanding T = −3.906 3.79 3.43
(sig .000)
During these times, my work is more demanding than normally T = −4.559 3.22 2.99
(sig .000)
During these times, I am working more hours than normally n.s. 2.93 2.84
During these times, I am getting less work done than normally n.s. 2.94 3.01
I do not see my colleagues and other people as much as I would have n.s. 4.35 4.29
liked to.
I need data or documents to do my work which I do not have access n.s. 2.60 2.73
to at home
It requires more effort from me that I cannot use my normal routines n.s. 3.14 3.22
4 K. KIRCHNER ET AL.
Figure 1. Comparison of how employees and managers experience WFH expressed by “Work done compared to normally” vs.
“Working hours compared to normally”.
employees”. Secondly, leadership from a distance is also
considered a challenging task. Work had to be re-organised
after the lockdown, projects got delayed, collaboration
became more difficult and the direct and informal contact
with employees was lost. A major issue is the organisation
of the communication and collaboration processes online,
where face-to-face communication, including facial expres­
sions and body language, is nearly impossible. Here, video
conversation tools were often mentioned as means to miti­
gate some of the distance-based issues.
4. Discussion
This study investigated the impact of WFH on man­
agers of knowledge workers during the COVID-19
pandemic compared to employees’ experiences. The
analysis shows that WFH has benefits for the employ­
ees, such as more flexibility in the working day and less
commuting time, but there seem to be more draw­
backs to consider for the managers.
4.1. WFH is more challenging for managers
This study found that managers experience WFH to be
more challenging than employees (Tables 2 and),
while both groups consider their work during the
pandemic to be more challenging than normal. The
data shows that managers worked more hours (i.e. had
longer workdays). Possible explanations could be
“Additional organisational tasks”, “difficulties in lead­
ing online” and “coordinating and collaborating with
the employees across distance”, which the managers
reported as challenging experiences when WFH as
distance managers.
The data set does not give any insights into the
relative increase in hours for either managers or
employees. A recent study among 3,143,270 users
found that compared to pre-pandemic levels, there has
been an increase in the number of meetings per person
(+12.9%) and the number of attendees per meeting
(+13.5%). The meetings have become shorter, with
a decrease in the average length (−20.1%). The study
concludes that the net effect is that people spent less
time in meetings per day (−11.5%) in the post-
lockdown period. However, the study found a significa
nt and durable increase in length of the average work­
day (+8.2%, or +48.5 minutes; DeFilippis et al., 2020).
This may lead people to feel overworked and over­
whelmed. If managers WFH work more hours than
their employees do, they are potentially at higher risk
of stress or burnout due to their working situation.
When leaders experience that their day is getting
longer, that there are more meetings and that they tied
to computer, then one explanation may be that one of the
key activities in management, the informal non-planned
chat by the water cooler or coffee machine, is converted
into more formal planned meetings online. This may also
explain why some managers become less productive even
though they work more hours. Another clear challenge
mentioned is the “fewer breaks”, where the managers
experience being more tied to the computer than the
employees are. The number of managers’ stakeholders
can be one explanation of this. If it is more time-
consuming to exercise the day-to-day management and
at the same time managers are also to coordinate activ­
ities with their fellow managers and report to a superior,
then more meetings will be held, which does not allow
for many breaks. Another possible cause could be the

Table 3. Results of the qualitative analysis of managers’ challenges while working from home.
Topic Issues mentioned by managers
Digitalisation of ● Not all can be done from home
processes
Organisation of ● Need time to re-organise the work
work ● Coordination and organisation more complex
● Requires re-organisation of projects which leads to delays in
projects
● Need extra time for crisis management
Distance ● Distance leadership is difficult
leadership ● Cannot find enough work to do at home for all employees
● Work more intensively together with employees
● Difficult to know how employees feel, to stay in contact with
them and to encourage them to “see” each other virtually
● Tricky to organise creative work online
Changing ● Communication is generally bad
communication ● Do other work in parallel during online meetings
behaviour ● Have shorter meetings but more emails
● More effective meetings but less informal talks
● People are less accessible
Missing face-to- ● Direct face-to-face communication missing
face ● facial expressions and body language missing
communication ● Missing travel
● Some employees cannot express themselves well in
a written form
● Feel physical distance to employees
Missing informal ● Informal communication about work missing
contacts ● Ask colleagues more how they feel now
settings of online meetings, which typically follow the
default settings of a calendar program. With many sta­
keholders and meetings, there is a risk that the
working day will be tightly packed with meetings without
breaks, as the calendar systems do not take time for
breaks into account.
4.2. Organisational support for distance
managers
As organisations expect that more people will con­
tinue to work from home post COVID-19 (Editors
note, 2020; The European Commission’s Science and
Knowledge Centre, 2020; Vargas, 2020), there is
a need to discuss how this should be organised; for
example, how to ensure that employees do not over­
work or become overwhelmed, that teams perform
well and that they have access to the necessary tech­
nologies. Further, it is equally important to consider
how to support distance managers regarding their
performance, well-being and ability to execute across
distances and to reduce the challenging conditions for
both employees and managers.
We find that organisations should consider how to
support distance managers and the processes of distance
management and collaboration. Social platforms have
already shown their potential in supporting collaboration
during the pandemic (Waizenegger et al., 2020). Clear
communication between managers and employees,
including body language and a common understanding,
were often highlighted as important for distance
KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT RESEARCH & PRACTICE 5
Example quote (translated from Danish)
“Selected to work from home for focused tasks. All of my work
cannot be performed from home.”
“It is much more time consuming to coordinate and quickly
clarify difficult problems – of which there are many – at
a distance.”
“It requires more attention and organisation of me as a manager
to get in touch with my employees. At the same time, I have to
make sure that the employees also get to ‘see’ each other. It
requires more planning than when we are all in the office
together. It can be difficult to keep track of how employees
feel physically and mentally.”
“Other people are less accessible, particularly external
stakeholders. It is difficult to make progress on the work, so
there will be delays in on-going projects.”
“It is a challenge not being able to communicate with colleagues
face to face. It is difficult to secure mutual understanding
when handing over a task . . . Even on the phone, it is difficult
to make sure that there are no misunderstandings, omissions
or implied knowledge, which remain unsaid, and later proves
to be a source of problems in solving a joint task.”
“You have to be much more attuned to your employees in your
management – the informal contact does not occur at the
coffee machine, and there is less small talk on video than in
ordinary meetings. It may be more effective, but you lose the
social sense of your employees and their well-being and
challenges at work.”
managers in our study. Creative ways should be found
to support causal communication and collaboration in
a company. Both formal and informal communication
can be supported by different social platforms (Razmerita
et al., 2014), such as video conferencing systems (to over­
come the issue of missing body language) or chat systems,
which allow for informal communication. Digital meet­
ing places or virtual reality scenarios may be considered
for future socialising (Boughzala et al., 2012; Pearlman &
Gates, 2010), and telerobots are an option for managers
who are unable to join physically with their team (Lee &
Takayama, 2011; Tsui et al., 2011). Opportunities for
informal communication should also be facilitated to
meet with colleagues and discuss what they are working
on and how they are feeling. Social platforms can create
proximity, help to coordinate, avoid misunderstandings
through synchronous video communication and thus
simplify communication. Organisations should commu­
nicate good practices for distance communication that
managers can follow and support knowledge sharing
among managers. Attention should be given to the pos­
sibilities of using social platforms for this purpose (Sarka
& Ipsen, 2017).
4.3. Changes in leadership capabilities
A part of this study was also to focus on what changes
would be required from the managers in order to lead
across distances. The study shows that core leadership
tasks like direct and informal contact and face-to-face
communication about work-related tasks, including
6 K. KIRCHNER ET AL.
facial expressions and body language, were nearly
impossible. This means that the leaders have had to
change their leadership in sync with the changes in
task and work processes as they could not lead using
the traditional methods when everybody started to
work from home. In practice, leadership became
a dynamic process that evolved in accordance with
who and how many worked from home, and organisa­
tions should be aware that leadership is not just about
managing people as they used to do. Distance leader­
ship requires change in leadership through learning
and adapting to the new ways of working, where the
learning process requires activities targeting the man­
agers. Leadership learning results partly from direct
feedback and knowledge sharing, as well as from
informal coaching and mentoring (Sofo et al., 2013),
all of which may be lost when managing from home.
Moreover, learning within an organisation is a set of
relationships and behaviours that transform tacit into
explicit knowledge (Sofo & Ammirato, 2011). A point
that can be made here is that organisational learning
(Argyris, 1977; Argyris & Schön, 1996) becomes more
complicated because of the distance, and it is therefore
important that organisations create a learning culture
(Sofo & Ammirato, 2011) and find digital ways that
create opportunities to learn and develop new leader­
ship capabilities despite the distance.
4.4. Distance management as an organisational
responsibility
Our findings suggest that distance management is
both a personal and organisational capability that
must be learned and refined. If the focus is solely on
single managers and their ability to deal with their
tasks, then there is a risk of individual and reactive
actions to their situation when they feel challenged.
Accordingly, we suggest a shift in focus from viewing
the individual as the core of a problem and instead
consider the organisational design and capabilities
(Galbraith, 2002; Ipsen et al., 2020). For instance,
managers might benefit from knowledge sharing
with their fellow managers on how to best deal with
the new conditions. This sharing should be considered
a responsibility of the organisation, for instance, via
Human Resource initiatives, and not left to the indi­
vidual manager to deal with. Managers might be pro­
vided with a means to organise regular informal
gatherings of employees WFH or to establish satellite
offices for smaller groups (Nardelli & Ipsen, 2019).
4.5. Distance management of knowledge work –
between the positive and negative
Though managers found WFH more challenging than
the employees, it should be noted that the managers
also approved of the situation – e.g., shorter meetings
and increased work control. This suggests that WFH
comes with both advantages and disadvantages to both
managers and knowledge workers and that the same
aspect of knowledge work constitutes a paradox: the
same work-related or organisational issues could be
experienced as both an opportunity and a source of
stress depending on the role in an organisation.
5. Conclusion
The aim of this study was to gain insight into
managers’ experiences of WFH during COVID-19
compared to employees’ experiences resulting from
their transition to distance managers in knowledge
work. Building on Danish responses from 1053
employees and 290 managers of knowledge work,
who had limited prior experience in distance man­
agement, our analysis revealed that managers of
knowledge work overall found their work during
lockdown more challenging than employees did.
Their challenges are directly connected to the new
work tasks and the loss of social interaction, which
emphasises a need to address organisational support
to reduce the challenging conditions for both
employees and managers. With this in mind, it is
important to recognise that becoming a distance
manager requires changes in leadership through
learning and adapting to the new ways of working
where the learning process requires activities target­
ing the managers – not leaving it up to individual
managers to develop new leadership capabilities. In
conclusion, it is important that organisations con­
sider the well-being and performance consequences
of WFH not only for employees but also for man­
agers, as their experiences differ, and the managers
express challenges in their leadership.
6. Limitations
There are obvious limitations to this study. First, we
only considered Danish data. Managers in other coun­
tries might perceive their situations differently depend
ing on, for instance, national differences in the lock­
down regulations, their previous experience with
WFH, the characteristics of the working culture in
their country or the technical infrastructure. Second,
the working-from-home situations were clearly influ­
enced by the fact that all family members had to stay at
home, so the managers (and employees also) with
children or those caring for the elderly might have
faced greater challenges. Third, we did not consider
the specific company or industrial sector where people
are employed. Company culture and organisation
might also influence the WFH situation. Finally, data
were collected in the first weeks of enforced working

from home. To address this limitation, we suggest that
a follow-up study among managers be conducted.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
ORCID
Kathrin Kirchner http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4638-0403
Christine Ipsen http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2394-5571
John Paulin Hansen http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5594-
3645
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