Digital Leadership ‒ Mountain or Molehill? A Literature Review

Despite the high relevance of digital leadership (DL) in practitioner outlets, its definition and determinants remain fuzzy, resulting in impeded DL theory development. Based on a structured literature review grounded in 96 publications, we developed a new definition of DL and a nomological determinant network. First, we provide conceptual clarity by differentiating DL from E-leadership with a definition of the former. Second, we present an inductively developed nomological network that specifies 13 DL determinants structured per the categories organizational level, individual level, and digital leader. Based on this network, we propose six future research areas, which are (1) theoretical clarity of DL as a concept, (2) measurement systems, (3) DL’s impact on output variables, (4) empirical evidence about determinants of the nomological network, (5) research design extensions through further perspectives and instruments, and (6) approaches to adopt DL.