Digital Leadership in China's Public Sector: An Exploratory Research Based on Grounded Theory 

Abstract

The development of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has accelerated during the past few decades. This ongoing transformation radically changes organizational structures and paves the way for an entirely new working paradigm. As technology advances swiftly and the digital era expands, the leadership system gradually demonstrates a trend of co-evolution with advanced information technology (digital technology) and introduces a new style of "digital leadership."

In the literature, numerous discussions have centered on the study of digital governance at the macro level, while research on digital leadership at the micro level has received little attention. Digital leadership research is still in its early stages of development. Firstly, the previous research on digital leadership largely fails to differentiate between "digital leadership" and "e-leadership," resulting in frequent confusion and mixing in the digital leadership literature. Due to the dynamic nature of technological development over time, there are numerous distinctions between the recently emerging "digital leadership" and the prevalent "e-leadership" study. Second, while the research on digital leadership has garnered a great deal of interest and popularity in business management, education, and psychology, digital leadership studies have yet to make substantial progress in the field of public administration. Thirdly, empirical research is lacking in this field. There is still need to gather more data and empirical evidence in the study of digital leadership.

To address these shortcomings and capture the underlying dynamics of digital leadership, this study examines the conceptual features and structural dimensions of digital leadership. This study's core question is: what constitutes digital leadership in China’s public sector?

Using the grounded theory methodology, this study provides a unique theoretical analysis of the conceptualization and operationalization of digital leadership in China's public sector. Following grounded procedures, a series of interviews were conducted in three types of public sector organizations: big data departments, managerial departments, and strategic decision-making departments. After one and a half years of data collection, 102 in-depth interviewees (of 96 from public sectors, 6 from a university and a high-tech company) were conducted and categorized as technical-level leaders (29 interviews), managerial-level leaders (32 interviewees), or strategic-level leaders (35 interviewees).

Based on the various organizational roles in China's public sectors, this study identified the "storylines" and associated mechanisms of digital leadership in China's public sector: (1) Focusing on digital-tech competency development for leaders at the technical level; (2) Focusing on digital-change competency development for leaders at the managerial level; (3)Focusing on digital mindset competency development for leaders at the strategic level.

Based on the common features and characteristics of digital leadership, this study integrated the conceptual definition and structural dimensions of digital leadership. Specifically, digital leadership refers to a leader's competencies to lead relevant members inside and outside the organization to facilitate organization's digital transformation and achieve effective digital governance by integrating digital technologies and core demands . The structural dimensions of digital leadership include digital mindset, digital tech, digital team-building, digital visioning, digital change, and digital collaboration. Among them, digital mindset and digital change are the two most fundamental structural components of digital leadership. The above-mentioned conceptual definition and structural dimensions of digital leadership distinguish it from traditional leadership and give the term digital leadership a unique theoretical value.
Based on the continuous comparison of digital leadership and external literature, this study concludes that: (1) digital leadership in practice is not detached from the existing literature but has a certain degree of relevance and continuity with the discussions on the current topic of digital leadership; (2)digital leadership in public sector reflects the reality of digital technology use for developing macro-level socioeconomic policies, dictating political developments, and establishing legal and regulatory contexts, as well as creating public values through digital service delivery. In this sense, the public-sector digital leadership could be interpreted as more macro-level, outward-oriented, public value-driven, than the private-sector digital leadership; (3) digital leadership in China reflects an important role of the Chinese top-down governing context in digital technology use. The top-down synchronized leadership efforts in digital technology use is clearly different from leadership efforts seen in most western contexts; (4) E-leadership is ICT-mediated leadership system which focused on team communication-oriented e-competency; while digital leadership is digital technology-mediated leadership system which focused on organizational change-oriented digital-competency. Both competencies in e-leadership and digital leadership consist key elements of the technology-mediated leadership theory.

Date of Award	8 May 2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	City University of Hong Kong
Supervisor	Kaifeng Yang (External Supervisor) & Xiaohu WANG (Supervisor)