Leadership in the Context of a New World: Digital Leadership and Industry 4.0

Christoph Bach and Rozália Sulíková
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Christoph Bach: Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovak Republic
Rozália Sulíková: Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovak Republic

Managing Global Transitions, 2021, vol. 19, issue 3 (Fall), 209-226

Abstract: This paper attempts to address and critically examine a current concept of leadership in business studies: digital leadership. Researchers often say that this is a new leadership style and that there is a necessity for such a new style because the entrepreneurial environment has changed considerably with digitisation, but also with Industry 4.0, which to a certain extent coincides with digitisation, and the concept of a so-called VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Com-plex and Ambiguous) world. The conclusion drawn here could be summarised as follows: a changed business environment forces companies to react, namely with a new way of leading – digital leadership. This study will show that such a concept is by no means new, as research claims, but rather has been in existence for more than 150 years.What many researchers understand by digital leadership, apart from the demand for driving forward digitisation, coincides with the leadership principle introduced by Prussian General Moltke, known as ‘mission-type tactics.’ One of the aims of this paper is to demonstrate this. It will also be shown that digital leadership, in contrast to transformational leadership, can be acquired and that digital leadership cannot be classified in the opposition to transformational or transactional leadership, but is rather to be held and understood as a third variant. Only a prescriptive method based on understanding seems to be a suitable method.

Keywords: digital leadership; industry 4.0; smart factory; digitisation; VUCA; transactional leadership; transformational leadership; mission-type tactic; ambidexterity; competence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D23 J81 L20 M12 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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DOI: 10.26493/1854-6935.19.209-226

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