What are the Challenges of Leadership in the Digital World?

As today’s companies strive to develop new digital capabilities, digital leaders are making significant changes in their corporate culture and strategy formulation processes. These changes raise important questions about what it means to run a digital business. Digital leaders must articulate a vision people can share and also create conditions that facilitate digital maturity. Considering these premises, it deepens the theme of digital leadership by emphasizing that creating cooperation and consensus for organizational effectiveness in the digital field is necessary to define the strengths of individuals, provide meaning and purpose, together with attractive visions.

The focus is on understanding whether digital leaders can gain control over all the mechanisms triggered by the turbulent business environment. More precisely, the digital environment makes organizational practices more visible to potential audiences through employee involvement, increased attention to relational aspects of organizational life and stakeholders’ expectations for increased organizational transparency.

Digital Leadership

The topic of leadership has been studied in various perspectives and in different contexts. The main difficulty in the theoretical context is characterized by the transaction taking place between the static world and the digital world. This latter requires specific competencies and abilities that can improve organizational relationships in the referring ecosystem. In other words, leadership theory is shifting from a modern, static theory of leadership that emphasizes the leader person (eg traits) to an increasing acceptance of discursive resources and organizational relationships involved in leadership practices. Moreover, digital leadership not only expresses the fact of running businesses in the age of artificial intelligence, but also includes having the right digital skills to drive technological change and innovation.

Digital leadership relies on certain factors, such as organizational agility, involvement of qualified staff, leadership, support from technology partners, investment, culture, alignment of new digital technologies with existing IT and learning from failed projects. In fact, the real challenge is to manage and balance all these factors contextually. This type of leadership requires leadership core skills in developing both internal and external cooperation to co-generate ideas and strategies for digital changes. Digital leadership can also be thought of as a strategic factor affecting the well-being of internal human resources.

The holistic vision of digital leadership is an overlap between digital literacy (i.e. computer literacy, ICT literacy, digital competence and digital readiness) and digital leadership itself (i.e. digital leadership skills, capabilities). As for leadership abilities] it refers to the ability to create a transformative digital vision, energize employees through participation, focus on digital governance, and build technological leadership. In particular, five factors are crucial to understanding how digital leaders can have a positive impact on a firm’s success:

• Delegated decision making: It means that decisions are made at the most appropriate level closest to the client; In this sense, leaders should share power and support others to make the right decisions.

• Collaborative success: Refers to working together as a team to achieve shared results; leaders must ensure that teams are working effectively and working well throughout the entire process.

• Agility: It is about adapting to changing conditions and developing in line with the purpose and direction.

• Purpose and direction: This is closely linked to the importance of storytelling and the use of narratives in leadership work.

• Originality: Building trust and building corporate reputation; According to this view, leaders act in integrity and balance to build relationships based on trust.

According to a study, digitalization is characterized by three different factors:

(1) Exponential growth of digital technologies;

(2) digitalization economies

(3) compatibility of different technologies.

Important technological aspects are the connection of people and things through the Internet and cloud technology. Social media platforms that build large staff networks play an important role; the same approach can be used for companies (social collaboration platforms). At the same time, the ‘internet of things’ is a system of machines, wearable devices, products, etc. It builds up their networks. A huge amount of data is produced based on these networks. This big data can be used (in real time) for data analytics and business forecasting.

Artificial intelligence is becoming more and more important to do this. The concept of Industry 4.0 is at the center of these technological aspects. In the age of Industry 4.0, while production systems can create the so-called ‘cyber twin’; Smart decisions must be made in the physical world and through real-time communication and collaboration. Industry 4.0 combines the developments of the latest technological age, which will keep business models up to date, with a smart production process. Technological developments affect the competitive environment based on new technological possibilities (new business models, new competitors, new products and services, etc.).

Versatile Dexterity

Some of the literature has so far defined two hand skills from both a strategic and organizational point of view. However, there is still a lacking issue regarding the main sources of the two handicrafts in an organization and the relative relationships between these individual resources and the organization as a whole. Hence, the key is to apply this concept within organizations to see the roots and overall set of relationships linked to the two hand skills that can have a positive impact on firm performance.

Versatile business can be analyzed in the light of management’s and decision-makers’ ability to research, create, and allocate value. In the literature, multi-faceted initiative has often been associated with management skills, counseling / guidance, organizational skills, and cognitive processes. These are as follows;

• Evaluates contradictions

• Multitasking at the same time;

• Quickly updates their knowledge, skills and competencies

• High experience in managing radical and unexpected changes

• Have specific diversity management skills