Digital Leadership Skills and Associations with Psychological Well-Being

Sabrina Zeike, Katherine Bradbury, Lara Lindert and Holger Pfaff
Additional contact information
Sabrina Zeike: Institute of Medical Sociology, Health Services Research, and Rehabilitation Science (IMVR), The University of Cologne, Medical Faculty, 50933 Cologne, Germany
Katherine Bradbury: Department of Psychology, Faculty of Social and Human Sciences, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK
Lara Lindert: Institute of Medical Sociology, Health Services Research, and Rehabilitation Science (IMVR), The University of Cologne, Medical Faculty, 50933 Cologne, Germany
Holger Pfaff: Institute of Medical Sociology, Health Services Research, and Rehabilitation Science (IMVR), The University of Cologne, Medical Faculty, 50933 Cologne, Germany

IJERPH, 2019, vol. 16, issue 14, 1-12

Abstract: Due to increasing digitalisation, today’s working world is changing rapidly and provides managers with new challenges. Digital leadership is an important factor in managing these challenges and has become a key concept in the discussion about what kinds of skills managers need for digital transformation. The main research question our study explored was if digital leadership is associated with psychological well-being in upper-level managers. Based on a qualitative pilot study and relevant literature, we developed a new scale for digital leadership in managers. We conducted an online survey with a sample of 368 upper-level managers from a large German ICT-company. Using a stepwise logistic regression analysis, potential effects of digital leadership on psychological well-being (WHO-5) were analysed. Logistic regression analyses showed that better skills in digital leadership were significantly associated with higher well-being. Results also showed that gender, age and managerial experience had no effect in our model. Our study provides a valuable insight into the association between digital leadership and well-being in managers. However, further research is necessary to validate the newly developed scale for digital leadership and to confirm a causal effect in the relationship between digital leadership and well-being.

Keywords: digital leadership; psychological well-being; WHO-5; health at work; digital transformation; digitalisation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/14/2628/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/14/2628/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:16:y:2019:i:14:p:2628-:d:250923

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().