Digital Leadership

Digitalization has fostered virtual organizations, and nothing has made that clearer than the shutdowns due to the Covid-19 pandemic. There have been structural changes in how leaders interact with followers and vice versa. This has changed the power dynamics between followers and leaders. This resource will introduce you to how the leader and follower roles can change situationally and examines approaches to leader-followership in the digital age.

1. Introduction

The twenty-first century marks the beginning of an unprecedented, fast-paced technological revolution of digitization. As a result, today's digital followers, leaders, and ordinary citizens possess instant access to a vast amount of information, and there has been greater dissemination of knowledge than ever before. Furthermore, as information technology has opened up new opportunities for sharing knowledge, information, and work responsibilities, most traditional, hierarchical leadership theories and models have become outdated and irrelevant because they were not designed for the digital age. As artificial intelligent technologies and tools replace traditional managerial positions in organizations, and as company workers become increasingly engaged in multiple leading and following roles in today's virtual organizations, there is a greater need for new models of leading and following in the virtual space, where participants may acquire different types of leading and following competencies that are more relevant for the digital age.

The emerging literature on leadership for the digital era can be categorized as leadership in the digital age, digital leadership, e-leadership, and cyber leadership. Leadership in the digital age deals with the consequences of the digitization of leadership conceptualization and practice in a virtual space. Digital leadership as a relational, fluid, spontaneous, and role-based leadership redefines leadership behavior and practice through the use of digital tools in the virtual world. E-leadership, as the traditional leadership, faces similar issues of vision, motivation, and direction to overcome challenges of social influence processes through advanced information technology (AIT) in the areas of communication, trust, and relationships between leaders and followers in a virtual organizations. Lastly, cyber leadership, a digital version of military leadership, deals with complex and multifaceted issues of organizational safety and security such as information warfare, cyber-security threats, and cyber-attacks.

The above-mentioned literature on digital leadership shows a clear departure from the leadership paradigm established by Baby Boomer after World War II. Since then, major cultural and generational changes have taken place in the areas of communication, relationships, and attitudes toward leadership, authority, and corporate loyalty. The value and the philosophy of work have changed from working hard and making a profit at any cost (Boomer and Gen Xers) to working for personal satisfaction and for individual and environmental well-being (Millennials and Gen Zers). Additionally, the current research on leadership has moved from leader-centered to follower-inclusive and leader-follower relational models of leadership. Nowadays, leadership education and training resources are no longer solely the privilege of company managers and leaders. More than 1570 leadership degree programs exist worldwide, most of which are in colleges and universities in the United States, that offer leadership certification and associate, bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degree programs. As a result, the traditional understanding of positional leaders and followers in organizations has become blurrier and irrelevant for the contemporary leadership in the digital age because the latter is spontaneous and organic while the former is rigid and static.

However, the above-mentioned literature on digital leadership does not offer mechanisms for bridging the socio-cultural, theoretical, philosophical, and generational gaps that exist today between Boomers and Millennials. Nor does it proposal plans for transition from the traditional theories and practices of leadership to contemporary leader-followership processes in the age of information and technology. The following questions are worth exploring:

  • How does digital leadership deal with the existing hierarchical relationships and power distances between leaders and followers in today's organizations?
  • Since the traditional hierarchical leadership practiced in most organizations will not cease to exist any time soon and that the old and the new have to co-exist together for a time being until the old is replaced by the new organizational structures and relationships, what can be done today to bridge that gap for leadership continuity between different generations of the workforce?

To address these and related issues in the digital age, this chapter offers alternative approaches and a conceptual framework to bridge the discontinuity gap between pre-digital and digital leader-followership that emerged as the consequence of contextual differences between physical and virtual space for leadership, socio-cultural, and value changes among leaders and followers, theoretical shifts in leadership studies, and changes in leadership education.