Digital Leadership Characteristics: A Systematic Literature Review

Digital leadership is crucial for modern organisations as it enables leaders to effectively leverage technology and innovation, driving organisational agility, fostering a culture of collaboration, and ensuring competitiveness in an increasingly digital marketplace. As the use of digital technology continues to grow, the need for effective digital leadership has become increasingly important. Therefore, digital leaders must not only understand the latest technological advancements, but also possess the necessary skills and competencies to effectively lead and manage their teams through the digital transformation process. The aim of this study is to evaluate the characteristics identified by other scholars when describing digital leadership. For this purpose, a systematic literature review based on Web of Science, EBSCO, Google Scholar, and Scopus databases has been conducted to further identify, select, and critically appraise prior research pertaining to digital leadership characteristics. To analyse and synthetize the qualitative data, the content analysis method was used to review 20 publications covering digital leadership in a broad range of fields. The inclusion criteria involved articles that outlined the characteristics and competencies of digital leaders, written in English, published during the period 2015 to 2022 and also relevant scholarly articles. All those that did not meet these characteristics were excluded. The key findings revealed that there were 11 commonly used digital leadership characteristics, namely having a global vision, having deep knowledge, being a natural collaborator, being inquisitive, being empowering, having a customer focus, being agile, being creative, being prepared to take risks, and being adaptable and able to foster innovation. Understanding and cultivating these digital leadership characteristics can empower leaders of the organisations to effectively harness the power of technology, inspire their teams, and lead their organisations towards sustainable digital success.