The intense use of ICTS in the workplace, despite its advantages, presents important challenges to employees’ well-being and performance. While leaders play an important role in shaping employees’ experiences with ICTS, it is unclear whether traditional leadership approaches are still sufficient and need to be complemented – or even replaced - with other leadership styles to deal with the challenges arising from ICTS. Therefore, the DIGILEAD project focuses on how leadership affects the relation between employees’ experiences with ICTS and their well-being and performances. In addition, whether digital leadership, as a newly identified leadership style, affects these relations. Answering these questions is relevant to help businesses in Europe overcome the challenges of digitalization and ensure both organizations and their employees benefit from the digital economy. The overall objectives and related work in the second reporting period of the project are summarized below:
OB1 - Provide a systematic literature review on the role of leadership in relation to employees’ technological demands and resources: We have delivered the final result (P1) “a systematic review of information systems research, work and organizational psychology, human resource management and leadership literature on the role of leadership in dealing with technological job demands” (WP1).
OB2 - Construct a digital leadership inventory (DLI) to measure digital leadership: We have delivered the final result (P2) “constructing, validating and documenting the DLI, as a reliable scale to measure digital leadership in organizations” (WP2).
OB3 - Conduct an empirical test of the DLI to assess how digital leadership regulates the relationships between technological demands in the workplace vis-à-vis employees’ well-being and performance: We are finalizing the final result (P3) “empirical test of the DLI, to assess how digital leadership buffers or strengthens the relation between technological job characteristics and employee well-being and performance” (WP3).
OB4 - Translate knowledge on how leaders can help employees to deal with ICTS in the workplace to the professional sphere (WP4): We are finalizing the final result (P4) “practitioner-oriented digital leadership seminar, demonstrating the use of the DLI as a scanner to assess digital leadership within organizations.”
