The Role of Technology in Leadership with a Exploratory Mixed Approach

The main purpose of present study was to investigate the state of technology in leadership from leaders’ and followers’ point of view. This study in purpose was applied and from methodology point of view was based on mixture of exploratory-sequential (qualitative-quantitative). The community of the study were educational experts and principals of governmental girl’s elementary schools in Tehran. The qualitative sampling method was purposeful and criterion-oriented, and 9 people were selected; and in the quantitative stage, the sample size was estimated to be 369 people based on the "Cochran" formula, of which 340 people were the final sample using the stratified and cluster sampling method. The data collection tool in the qualitative part was a semi-structured interview, whose reliability was confirmed by the agreement coefficient (75%). The data was collected in the quantitative section using a researcher-made questionnaire, the reliability of which was estimated with Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.95. In the qualitative data analysis part of this research, grounded theory coding method based on Strauss and Corbin's approach was used, and in the quantitative stage, one-sample t, independent groups t, and analysis of variance were used. The findings of this research showed that technology has been able to have a positive effect on the activities of leaders and by identifying their most important challenges when using technology and the effective factors of virtual teams, leaders and followers can greatly better use technologies and increase their efficiency during daily activities.