Requirements of collaborative and transformational leadership in digital ecosystems: Techno-orchestrating leaders in a VUCA world

In today’s increasingly web-enabled digital world, business environment is being transformed into ecosystems of partners in which digital connectivity, real-time data, information sharing, and visibility are enabled. Partners are becoming increasingly dependent, network collaboration is turning into a key success factor, and managerial, organizational, and leadership paradigms are radically changing. This study investigates the requirements of leadership under these collaborative, transformational and technology-intensive conditions. Through a comprehensive and systematic literature review, the study offers main leadership requirements, desired leadership practices, and leader profiles to become successful in this context. Therefore, a conceptual framework is developed. The findings reveal that leadership requirements for digital ecosystems (DES’s) are entirely different from traditional leadership understanding, and orchestration stands out as a key concept. This study is valuable for providing a comprehensive literature review and developing a conceptual framework.