Digital leadership: characteristics, challenges and opportunities

Abstract

The authors define and set in context the digital transformation process and how it affects the development of companies, the appearance of digital leadership and the characteristics predominantly recognized in this new type of leadership. A qualitative methodology was employed to understand the triangular alignment and involvement, composed of organization, digital transformation, and leadership. The authors verify there are different top leaders in the most diverse areas of activity and that there are indeed substantial changes in the leadership process. It allowed the identification of a set of characteristics, mainly from the communicational point of view, which is essential for the effective pursuit of the objectives of both the different work teams and the organizations themselves. The authors fill a gap in the extant literature because they present the decisive leadership characteristics in the context of an increasingly digitalized work environment, and have verified they are not yet strongly anchored in the extant literature.