Transformative leadership competencies for organizational digital transformation

Abstract

Despite the flourishing literature on digital transformation (DT), there is still less research on the human side of DT—particularly on leaders’ competencies required to successfully trigger and drive organizational transformation in the context of the digital age. The human-centric approach and the leadership role are essential to understanding how organizations navigate DT by integrating digital-based knowledge. To understand the competencies necessary for a leader to drive organizational DT, this study combines and analyzes the results from a literature review on leadership styles and the findings from the semistructured interviews with 64 leaders of SMEs across a wide range of industries engaged in a DT journey. The analysis proposes the notion of transformative leadership to determine the capacity leaders must have to navigate organizational DT and identifies and describes the six competencies that distinguish a transformative leader.