How digital leadership drives organizational performance: evidence from parallel serial mediation pathways

This study integrates upper echelons theory (UET), the resource-based view (RBV) and dynamic capabilities theory (DCT) to explain how digital leadership enhances organizational performance through resources and capabilities. Using PLS-SEM on survey data from 205 managers in Vietnamese high-technology firms, the findings show that digital leadership strengthens technological capital, human capital and digital culture, which respectively enable sensing, seizing and transforming capabilities. These dynamic capabilities, in turn, improve organizational performance. Rather than exerting direct effects, digital leadership influences performance mainly through three parallel serial pathways: technological capital – sensing, human capital – seizing and digital culture – transforming. By unpacking these multistage mechanisms, the study provides a process-based account of leadership driven value creation in digitally turbulent contexts. The results advance theory by integrating leadership, resource and capability perspectives, and offer practical guidance for aligning digital investments, workforce development and cultural change with corresponding capabilities to achieve sustainable performance.