Reconfiguring Leadership in the United Kingdom: A Scoping Review of Remote Leadership in the Post-Covid-19 Era

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of remote and hybrid working across the United Kingdom, reshaping leadership practices and organisational design. Despite the increase in empirical studies on remote leadership, the breadth, patterns of methodology, and conceptual development of the evidence base are still patchy. This scoping review maps, critically appraises, and synthesises UK-focused evidence on remote leadership. Using the Arksey and O’Malley review methodology and Joanna Briggs Institute guidelines, a structured search was conducted on Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar databases for studies published between 2020 and 2026.  Following PRISMA-ScR guidance and incorporating a structured quality appraisal, we analyse 38 studies across sectors.  Findings indicate that effective remote leadership is a system-level capability defined by communication architecture, trust-based autonomy, relational capability, wellbeing orientation, and digital orchestration. However, the evidence base is methodologically heterogeneous, dominated by cross-sectional designs, and limited in sectoral breadth and longitudinal depth. We advance an integrative, multi-level framework and a research agenda for theory development and empirical testing in hybrid contexts.