UNDERSTANDING THE CHALLENGES OF E- LEADERSHIP: HOW TO LEAD PEOPLE AMID COVID-19 OUTBREAK IN FOOD AND BEVERAGE INDUSTRY: THAILAND

Abstract

In the digital era, there has been continuous digital technology development in Thailand especially during COVID -19 times. It’s undeniablethatinformationtechnologyhas played an important role and fundamentally changed how people work in almost every industry. Therefore, e- leadership could be identified as complex challenges for many organizations in Thailand. Sincemostofthefoodandbeverageindustriestendtorelymoreon traditional leadership. The researcher was then interested to explore the difficulties and learn how to lead people during crisis and social distancing.Thispaperusedthequalitativemethod by interviewing with leaders from 3 large food and beverage organizations in Thailand. An important finding in this paper isthatmanylargefoodandbeverageorganizationsinThailand were not ready to deal with this unexpected conditions and most of the leaders were unpreparedtothischangingworkenvironmentcontext.So,theroleofe-leadershipbecamethe challenges but needed for organizations to retain its performance. In addition, this paper will also discuss the recommendation that e- leaders would require for success including the technology that will further support the working condition. This paper concluded that e-leadership is required to keep the company running and will seize opportunities to build competitive advantage strategies in the future.