Date of Award

2025

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (School of Law and Business)

First Supervisor

Mary Anthony

Second Supervisor

Farveh Farivar

Abstract

Digitalisation is a phenomenon that is transforming society and is the process that moves an organisation to become digital. Research was conducted on senior leaders in the Australian defence industry with the purpose of investigating how the role and practice of leadership was changing because of digitalisation. A two-phased qualitative methodology was employed. An initial Delphi study on 13 experts in digital transformation was adopted to gain consensus on key issues, with the results informing a second stage of semi-structured interviews with 32 senior leaders in the Australian defence industry. The results identified factors that were influencing leadership, including increased complexity, new technologies and business models, use of remote working and the abundance of data. The study found that digitalisation was understood and valued by senior leaders, and although the fundamental role of leadership was not changing there were new responsibilities including communicating in new ways and leading virtual teams. However, digitalisation was impacting leadership practice to enable rapid decision making based on enhanced information, use of new technologies and the need to be tech savvy. It also found that expectations of new entrants to the workforce were influencing leadership, and that digitalisation was allowing for more delegation and trust in staff. A new model for leadership in the digital economy was proposed using evidence from the findings of the study and drawing upon the leadership theories of transformation, servant, e-leadership and followership. This offers an original study in a field with a limited amount of literature and adds to the scholarly research in the field of leadership whilst providing an understanding of how the context of digitalisation challenges theory. It provides insights for leaders of digital transformation to help design leadership models for digitalisation.

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