Paper short abstract:

Initiatives and development of digital technologies depend on good leadership. We intend to explicate characteristics of leaders essential to lead to digital development in organizations; and study how organizations value leadership and prepare leaders to champion initiatives to digital development.

Paper long abstract:

In the current era, digital technology has been among the competitive criteria for most organizations. Organizations have digitally transformed their services with the intention of imrpoving service delivery and improve efficiency and even boost revenue. Such transformation requires a digital leader who can champion such digital transformation. A digital leader is expected to initiate the digital transformation process, manage the process and even mobilize funds for such process. Thus, a digital leader must have some characteristics and behaviors that can enable him to achieve the goal of digital transformation. This research specifically studied the characteristics of digital leadership and based on Exploratory Factor Analysis identified related characteristics (i.e. factors) that were grouped into roles. The EFA of 23 items produced 7 factors while all 23 items loaded successfully. 4 factors and 13 items were included into the Confirmatory Factor Analysis which provided better fit for the sample data. The validity check showed the the digital leadership construct somehow converges and the 4 factors were different from one another. The study findings can be used by organization management while searching or promoting digital leaders, also they can be used in setting criteria and guidelines for getting leaders. Further research is recommended by incorporating more attributes and large sample size and if possible to consider cultural aspect.

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