I will be collaborating with Professor Audra on three projects with targeted outputs in journals in the field of International Business. The projects center on the themes of psychological safety, and leadership in global virtual teams and closely align with research that Audra conducts under one of my research streams on global virtual teams. According to Eurostat, Finland, in 2017, stood at No.3 among European nations, with 12.3% working population opting to work remotely. These are the statistics before the COVID-19 transpired and accelerated the use of practical means of collaboration. Leaders in such environments are the essential resource who must cope up with the new situation quickly. The prominent skill development needs for leaders comes in the form of ensuring the psychological safety among their employees while still managing good working relationships therefore the purpose of this research is to explain how leadership influences the psychological safety of others and relationship development among the team members in virtual work environments. This research project is 3 dimensional, where my doctoral research is the first dimension, and dimensions 2 and 3 constitute leadership (focusing on the Leader-Member exchange theory in the context of the virtual environment) and psychological safety. I have collected data with the team leaders of teams collaborating through virtual means. Further, I adapted two questioners to collect specific data. The “LMX-7 questionnaire” is based on the Leader-Member exchange theory (Graen & Uhl‐Blen, 1995). Employing this helped to gather data necessary to understand the leader-member relationship perspectives of their dyadic relationships. To collect the data for psychological safety, I adapted the “Team Learning and Psychological Safety Survey” to the virtual environment settings. The publications would answer the following questions, • how does leadership influences the psychological safety of others in virtual work environments? • How do the processes of Relationship Development unfold in GVTs? • How does the GVT members' engagements around multiple tasks shape the unfolding of relationship development? • How do different forms and nature of communication affect relationship development in GVTs? • How do the processes of relationship development unfold around team climate?

2022