Sello Mmakau, Tebogo Sethibe
Abstract
The fourth industrial revolution has led to the creation and application of new business models that serve digital consumers at all points of ecosystem interaction, resulting in the emergence of digital leadership. Digital leadership necessitates the development of new digital skills and expertise and the adoption of novel and unconventional working methods and ways of thinking. Despite the relevance of digital leadership across numerous industries, its definition and related dimensions still need to be clarified. The two main objectives of this article were (1) to identify and analyse key dimensions of digital leadership and (2) to develop a conceptual digital leadership model with key dimensions. A systematic literature review methodology was followed. After searching through major academic databases (EBSCOhost, Science Direct, ProQuest, IEEE Xplore, Springer and Google Scholar), covering a wide range of fields, 27 publications analysing digital leadership were discovered. The findings revealed that the most adopted digital leadership dimensions were innovation, collaboration, digital technology, vision, strategy, agility and people. Innovation and collaboration dimensions were each referenced by 70% of the total publications reviewed. Digital technology and vision dimensions were each adopted by 56%, strategy by 44%, and agility by 41%. The people and digital communication dimensions were each embraced by 37% of the total articles analysed. Moreover, more than 56% of the publications describing digital leadership concepts and models were created in Europe while 41% of the models were generated and tested in Asia. Surprisingly, only 4% of the digital leadership models were designed and tested in the United States of America (USA). These findings help advance the understanding of the research area of digital leadership and serve as a benchmark for subsequent studies by outlining the conceptual digital leadership critical dimensions needed to facilitate digital transformation.