Navigating Through the Digital Workplace: Measuring Leader Digital Competence

Abstract

In a modern digital workplace, leaders must have the necessary skills to lead employees virtually. Despite its high practical and theoretical relevance, a consensus on crucial digital competencies for virtual leaders is lacking, hindering a systematic exploration of the leader’s role in facilitating technology use. In the present article, we propose a new concept and instrument to assess leader digital competence (LDC). After reviewing the literature, we establish three dimensions of LDC, centering around the leader’s ability and inclination to select, promote, and enable technology and digital media among their employees. We provide support for the scale's convergent, discriminant, criterion-related, and incremental validity using four independent samples (N₁ = 156, N₂ = 309, N₃ = 201, N_{4 employee} = 452, N_{4 leader} = 93). Furthermore, results support the reliability and factor structure with the three proposed dimensions of the 10-item LDC scale. The findings demonstrate that the scale represents a psychometrically sound instrument, useful for further examining conditions for effectiveness in the virtual environment. Future research should aim to advance the understanding of antecedents and situational factors that influence the relevance of LDC and its impact on employee, team, and organizational outcomes.