Unveiling the mediating nexus of digital transformation on digital leadership and enterprise performance in manufacturing firms

Abstract

In today's rapidly evolving business landscape, digital transformation has become an imperative for organizations seeking to stay competitive and relevant. The relentless advancement of technology has brought about unprecedented opportunities and challenges, necessitating a shift in leadership paradigms to embrace the digital era fully. This investigation seeks to test the nexus between digital leadership, digital transformation, and enterprise performance. Empirically, the Smart PLS approach was employed to test the affiliation between digital leadership and enterprise performance, through the mediating effect of digital transformation. We collected data on manufacturing firms consisting of 471 managers across the various regions of Ghana. The finding indicates that digital leadership and digital transformation exhibit a positive affiliation with enterprise performance. Finally, digital transformation had a favorable mediating effect on the nexus between digital leadership and enterprise performance. Practitioners and firms would be motivated to seize the advantages of digital transformation as an opportunity to improve firm performance. Again, manufacturing firms that want to be leaders in the digital space have to acquire the services of a digital leader as part of their management portfolio team. This study contributes to the literature by providing new theoretical explanations for the inconsistent affiliation between digital leadership, digital transformation, and enterprise performance. This investigation also assists enterprises in reevaluating their digital strategies.