Integrating Knowledge. Serving Communities: Students Publish Book on Leading Remote Work

What if you could take a class offering cutting-edge insights on one of the hottest topics in the business world today - leading individuals who are working remotely? Then, what if you could take the knowledge learned in that class and co-author a book with your classmates? What if the knowledge in that book could be used to benefit managers and small business owners who have been thrust (often unexpectedly) into remote work?

These were the opportunities provided to students in ICCU Endowed Professor of Management Dr. Alex Bolinger’s elective course, Leadership from a Distance

“Over the past couple of years, I had the opportunity to speak to leaders from organizations across the state,” said Bolinger. “Whenever I interact with them, I ask what kinds of characteristics and skills they are looking for in our students. Over and over, industry leaders told me that they are seeking new hires who can effectively collaborate with and manage direct reports who are working remotely. That led me to create this class.

The participants in the class engaged with case studies, role-played manager-employee interactions, and had opportunities to hear from a variety of guest speakers. These speakers included ISU alumna and College of Business Leadership Board member Tamela Gates May, who shared her experiences and advice from her career as a pioneer of remote work going back decades, ISU MBA students Alicia Pino and Rae Karanjia, who presented their research on how leaders can seek feedback from employees when they can’t interact face-to-face and Dr. Sarah Wright, one of the world’s foremost authorities on loneliness in the workplace, who joined the class live via Zoom from New Zealand.

One of the greatest challenges of the class, however, was finding a textbook. “As I was preparing the materials for this class, I discovered that there were relatively few resources for guiding leaders in remote work environments,” Bolinger explained. “So, we wrote our own book as a class project.”

Students worked individually or in small groups, with each chapter of the book covering a different topic related to leading remote work. The book, entitled Leading Remote Work, is in publication with Kindle Direct

Publishing and will be available for sale on Amazon.com soon. Royalties from the book will be used to support student programs in the College of Business.

The book is accompanied by a class YouTube channel, where students created short “explainer videos” to vividly and concisely summarize the content of the chapter that they wrote, accessible at www.youtube. com/@isucob_leading_remote_work.

Perhaps the most unique outcome of the class, however, was a connection with the Small Business Development Center (SBDC) of Greater Los Angeles. When the semester started in January 2025, Los Angeles County was experiencing wildfires that leveled entire neighborhoods. The fires also forced many employees to work remotely and, in turn, their managers were suddenly and without preparation thrust into leading remote work.

With a connection facilitated by Ann Swanson, the Director of the SBDC in Southeast Idaho, Dr. Bolinger reached out to Los Angeles’s SBDC to inquire about providing access to copies of the book. That conversation led to an invitation for students from the class to contribute to a workshop, sometime in the summer of 2025 via Zoom, for small business owners throughout Southern California.

“I have been floored by how many students have reached out to describe how uniquely impactful this class, and the book project in particular, has been in their educational journey,” said Bolinger. “Our students are not just consumers of knowledge - with this project, they were also producers and disseminators of this much-needed, cutting-edge information.”

“I am continually amazed by the remarkable students that we have here at ISU,” Bolinger reflected. “It is not easy to write an entire book in one semester. But, our students embraced this unique opportunity that integrated everything they learned to provide an invaluable service to other leaders, many of whom they will never meet. I am really proud of how the book turned out and am looking forward to sharing it with the public.”

Since publishing, the book has come available for purchase on Amazon at the following link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FCFZ55SY