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.

7. Literature on digital leadership

7.3 E-leadership

Avolio et al. define e-leadership as "a social influence process mediated by AIT to produce a change in attitudes, feelings, thinking, behavior, and/or organizations". According to DasGupta's literature review on e-leadership, it has the same issues as traditional leadership (i.e., vision, direction, motivation, inspiration, trust). However, some challenges that e-leaders face are as follows: effective communication, conveying enthusiasm digitally, (b) building trust without face-to-face interactions, (c) creating presence, (d) inspiring, (e) mentoring, (f) monitoring and controlling social loafing, (g) fostering technical competence, and (h) finding work-life balance.