Digital Leadership: A Systematic Literature Review

The COVID-19 pandemic and digital disruption have transformed the world and organizations on an unprecedented scale, presenting leaders with unique challenges and creating an opportunity to study digital leadership. This area of research is expanding significantly, though it remains in a developmental and maturing phase. To date, theoretical studies are predominant, including systematic reviews, literature reviews, and bibliometric studies. This study conducts a systematic literature review and science mapping of 74 documents published between 2000 and 2022 in the Web of Science database, using VOSviewer software to analyze the field’s evolution. Findings reveal that research on digital leadership has grown, with digital transformation, digitalization, COVID-19, information and communication technologies, virtual teams, and creativity emerging as core themes in this domain. This study concludes that the effective implementation of digital leadership requires not only technological skills but also human-centered competencies; its application has predominantly expanded in the education sector, with limited use in construction.