The Dual Effects Of Digital Leadership On Employee Innovation Performance

Throughout the history of world civilization,mankind has experienced agricultural revolution,industrial revolution and information revolution.Each industrial technology revolution has brought a huge impact on human life and production,and constantly improved human ability to understand and transform the world.The rise of the digital age driven by digital technology is a long-lasting and inevitable process in the tide of human history.The digital economy is developing at an unprecedented speed,radiating in a wide range,and having a profound impact.It has also penetrated into other economic fields.The increasing liquidity and connectivity of commercial elements have been continuously enhanced,which has profoundly changed the development momentum and mode of the world economy.The COVID-19 pandemic has pressed the acceleration button of the digital revolution.In this process,the innovation and operation logic of enterprises are being subverted by digital technology,and the connotation of enterprise organizations has undergone fundamental changes.How to make employees have the ability to innovate is the fundamental solution to the uncertainty for organization,and it is also the core organizational management and leadership challenge.The charm of leaders is that when faced with the same employees and organizational resources,different leadership behaviors will produce different employee performance.The challenges that digital transformation brings to organizations do not only come from digital technology,but more fundamentally from the high uncertainty of the external environment.The frequent occurrence of‘black swan’ events in the global economic environment drives enterprises to constantly subvert themselves,reshape management thinking,and carry out subversive innovation in many aspects,such as management subjects,management models,organizational structures,corporate culture and international strategies,and respond to changes with an agile response speed.The key to ensuring that the organization remains agile is to focus on the growth of the employees and activate them to participate in organizational technological transformation to provide continuous value creation.If enterprise leaders can’t break through quickly in the face of risks,they will be eliminated soon.Of course,if leaders can withstand the test of the digital era,they will be able to lead enterprises to stand on the top of the times.In the surging tide of digital transformation,a number of outstanding business leaders have emerged from around the world.These leaders actively participate in the process of global digital transformation,take the initiative to adapt,and lead enterprises to meet the challenges of digital competition and maintain digital competitive advantage.Based on the above background,the research attempts to respond to the question from the digital age organizational management research,‘what is digital leadership?’ And ‘what mechanism does digital leadership fully motivate employees’ enthusiasm for innovation?’ In response to the above two questions,the research will try to answer them through two studies.On the basis of systematic combing and analysis based on relevant literature,Study 1 selected six leading enterprises in digital management in different industries around the world,applied the classic grounded theory to conduct three-level coding of interview texts of the six leaders,and refined their digital characteristics in organizational management practice.Considering the unavailability of multi-sample direct interviews with typical representatives of digital leadership,this study adopts biography for grounded research.The selected leader must be recognized by the academic community and the industry with outstanding achievements in digital innovation and transformation,and the biography must be oral or personal.The case selection involves many industries,including the Internet of things ecological industry(Haier),online retail industry(JD),mobile Internet industry(Xiaomi),its technology industry(Apple),and vehicle manufacturing industry(Tesla).At the same time,it also takes into account local enterprises(Haier,JD,and Xiaomi)and foreign enterprises(Apple and Tesla),aiming to observe the world’s leading digital enterprises from a more comprehensive perspective.After confirming that the saturation of the grounded theory meets the standard,the study developed the Digital Leadership Scale according to the standard steps of scale development,which aims to define the concept of digital leadership and provide an effective measurement tool for future research.Study 2 introduces the theoretical framework of Cognitive-Affective Personality System(CAPS),and explores the ‘double-edged sword’ effect from cognitive path and affective path.From the grounded theoretical materials of study1,it was found that excellent digital leaders can fully release the innovative potential of employees through their management behaviors.Based on this,study 2 further explores the mechanism of digital leadership to activate employees’ innovative behavior.Specifically,in the process of continuously introducing digital technology in the organization,whether employees can fully adapt to digital technology determines whether they can fully integrate with the organizational environment.When employees have an open and confident attitude towards digital technology,their digital self-efficacy will help employees improve their work efficiency and innovative performance by using digital technology.But at the same time,the rapid introduction of digital technology will also make employees have to bear multiple pressures brought by technology.Once technology becomes a burden,employees can only carry the weight forward and are unable to innovate.Therefore,study 2focuses on the differences of employees in the organizational digital transformation,observes the psychological process of ‘pain and happiness’ of employees in the process of interacting with digital technology,and explains it through the dual-path mechanism.In summary,the research focuses on the core relationship of ‘digital leadership-employee innovation performance’,integrates the correlation of ‘double-edged sword’ based on Cognitive-Affective Personality System,and more comprehensively describes the path mechanism of digital leadership affecting employee innovation performance.The features and possible innovations of the research are mainly presented from the following three aspects:First,the study comprehensively defines the concept of digital leadership behavior against the background of digital global transformation,constructs four dimensions of digital leadership,and develops a measurement tools for digital leadership.On the basis of realistic background,literature analysis,qualitative interviews and questionnaire data analysis,the research uses grounded research methods to observe the key management behaviors of these digital leaders from a close distance,with a view to summarize the digital leadership behaviors that are different from the existing leadership styles.The developed Digital Leadership Behavior Scale has a first-order four factor,which has passed confirmatory factor analysis and the reliability validity test,which provides a new method for the future research of digital leadership behavior.Second,the research explores the ‘double-edged sword’ effect of digital leadership behavior on employee innovation behavior based on the background of organizational digital transformation.Based on the Cognitive-Affective Personality System,the research integrates the cognitive path mechanism and affective path mechanism of the affect process of digital leadership behavior on employees’ innovative behavior into a research model.The integrated dual-path theoretical model makes up for the shortcomings of the existing research on digital leadership behavior to a certain extent.Third,the research explores the functional boundary of digital leadership behavior affecting employee innovation performance.The research takes organizational technology transformation support as an organizational environment factor,and explores the moderating effect of organizational technology transformation support in the dual path of digital leadership behavior on employee innovation behavior.On the cognitive path,the research proposes that organizational technology transformation support can enhance the positive effect of digital leadership behavior on employees’ self-efficacy based on social cognitive theory.On the affective path,based on the transactional theory of stress,the research proposes that organizational technology transformation support can weaken the negative effect of digital leadership behavior on employees’ technostress.Through the verification of the two-way moderation effect,it can be integrated to reveal how the technical support factors at the organizational level affect the process of digital leadership behavior on employees’ innovation behavior,which to a certain extent expands the research scope of organizational technology transformation support in organizational behavior research under the background of digital transformation.