Digital Leadership; Solution for Gaining Competitive Advantage in the Digital Age

The emergence of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and its accompanying digital disruptions necessitates a new style of leadership for managing organizations to ensure their sustainability and competitiveness. Accordingly, the present study examines the impact of digital leadership dimensions on achieving competitive advantage in online retail. For this purpose, based on the model proposed by Moonsamy (2022), six hypotheses were developed. The methodology of this research is descriptive-correlational in nature. The statistical population consists of all employees of online retail businesses in Tehran, and a total of 390 individuals were selected using a non-probability convenience sampling method. Data collection was conducted through library research and field methods (electronic questionnaire). The validity of the questionnaires was confirmed by expert opinion, and Cronbach’s alpha values greater than 0.70 for the constructs indicate acceptable reliability. Finally, structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the research hypotheses. The findings of this study indicate that all six hypotheses were confirmed at a 95% confidence level. Furthermore, among the dimensions of digital leadership, digital openness, digital competitive intelligence, and digital facilitative leadership were found to play the most significant roles in achieving digital competitive advantage, respectively.