A Systematic Review of Digital Leadership Research Using Topic Modeling and Keyword Network Analysis

Purpose: This study conducted keyword network analysis and topic modeling analysis by collecting digital leadership papers published in overseas academic journals to systematically examine how digital leadership research has been progressing.Methods: More specifically, the abstracts of the papers of the digital leadership were collected by using crawling technology, and yearly trends, frequency of publication, and network analysis were conducted respectively. Finally, topic groups were derived based on topic modeling analysis.Results: First, the frequency of subject analysis was conducted to identify the main research topics of digital leadership research for a total of 171 papers collected. I found that the frequency of appearance was high with 249 times of 'digital leadership', 63 times of 'digital transformation', 19 times of 'role', and 16 times of 'leadership'. Second, as a result of keyword network analysis, degree centrality was strong in the order of 'digital leadership', 'digital transformation', 'e-leadership', 'bibilometric analysis', and 'dynamic capability'. Finally, the digital leadership research was classified into eight topics based on topic modeling analysis.Conclusion: This study examined objectively and systematically the trend of digital leadership research, and also analyze what topics digital leadership is being studied in connection with. In addition, by using topic modeling, research subjects and the knowledge structure of digital leadership research were identified. These results provided important theoretical and practical implications for future research on digital leadership area.