Digital Leadership

Leadership and organizational studies in the West moved from a leader-focused to a process-based understanding of leader-follower relationships in organizations in the last 20 years. It is no longer about the leader but the process of leading and following, where individuals may function as both leaders and followers based on personal strengths or competencies. This shift may result in increased reciprocity or exchange of leading and following behaviors, roles, and functions and a decrease of static leader and follower positions in organizations. Thus, the process-based approach to leadership asserts that leadership is no longer about the positional leader, but the dynamic and dialectic process of leader-follower multi-dimensional human interactions. This approach may well be applied to digital leadership in virtual organizations where the uncertainty and the unpredictability of situations may demand non-leaders engage in the leadership process by exercising their strengths or competencies for organizational goal achievement.