Abstract: The digital transformation of organizations has changed something fundamental in leadership. And not all leadership styles are equipped to handle this in the same way. How does authoritarian, democratic, transactional, transformational and servant leadership manage the digital transformation of communication? The examination is based on systematic review of refereed literature in Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar, presented under three theories: Leader-Member Exchange theory (LMX), the communicative nature of leadership in terms of framing, and e-leadership. Authoritarian leadership receives new monitoring tools in digital platforms, but its authority was always based on being physically present and no app makes up for that. Democratic leadership has the participation it has always craved, but it is one thing to participate and quite another to deliberate, and the latter is harder online. Transactional leadership transitions to the digital world almost effortlessly because its task-monitoring style is a good fit, but this accelerates a motivational deficit. Transformational leadership is the hardest to adapt to: it requires the sense of being taken seriously and this is precisely what is hardest to convey digitally. Servant leadership is also affected because the individual focus of its attention has to be engineered rather than happen by proximity. This is not a hierarchy but rather a diagnostic of where the problem is for each leadership style, and what it takes for each to adapt.
Keywords: Digitalization; e-leadership; adaptation in an environment change; communication; leadership styles
Mardochée Bakulu Lau, Research Assistant, 230607002@arucad.edu.tr
Nuran Öze, Assoc. Prof. Dr. nuran.oze@arucad.edu.tr
Correspondence: 230607002@arucad.edu.tr
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