How and When Digital Leadership Affects Employee Proactive Behavior?

With the advent of Industry 5.0, enterprises face a variety of challenges and strive to undergo digital transformation to maintain competitive advantages. Digital leadership, characterized by both transformational qualities and the application of digital technologies, has steadily become a pivotal force in digital transformation. Employees, as the main body of enterprises, tend to absorb and echo the stance of their leaders during digital transformation and are likely to take proactive actions to adapt to new work environments and requirements. In the view of social learning theory, this research investigates how and when digital leadership shapes employees’ proactive behaviors by unpacking the cross-level mediating mechanisms of techno-insecurity and Felt Responsibility for Constructive Change (FRCC), as well as the cross-level moderating role of task interdependence. Data from 427 valid questionnaires were analyzed via MSEM. Findings reveal that digital leadership promotes employee proactive behavior by reducing techno-insecurity and by increasing FRCC. What’s more, task interdependence weakens the negative influence of digital leadership on techno-insecurity and techno-insecurity’s indirect effect, while it strengthens the positive impact of digital leadership on FRCC and FRCC’s indirect effect. These research results not only provide valuable theoretical insights for leadership, but also provide practical guidance for leading digital transformation within organizations.