Transformational Leadership and Digital Skills in Higher Education Institutes: During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Objectives: Recently, due to special conditions that the global community is experiencing (Covid-19), there is growing interest in research in educational leadership, especially in higher education, which will create an environment embedded in a collaborative culture, open to improvements, testing, and often unexpected challenges. Among the different forms of educational leadership, transformational leadership is recognized as the most appropriate for application in higher education, as it focuses on the division of leadership among academics with different skills in order to manage in a collective way the range of leadership duties required in different contexts. Methods/Analysis: This view is also reflected in this research paper, which focused on the degree of three specific forms of leadership (transformational leadership, transactional leadership, and leadership to be avoided) by members of the Senate of the University of Peloponnese. Descriptive and inductive methods of statistical analyses were applied for the interpretation of results. Findings: Notably, the findings indicate that leadership outcome has a strong positive correlation with transformational leadership and negative correlation with passive-to avoid leadership, confirming that higher transformational leadership implies greater efficiency and satisfaction for employees. Novelty/Improvement:A high degree of passive leadership coexists with the corresponding negative degree of implementation of digital leadership. Doi: 10.28991/esj-2021-01252 Full Text: PDF

The Combined Effect of Safety Specific Transformational Leadership and Safety Consciousness on Psychological Well-Being of Healthcare Workers

“…In this critical time, the role of leadership cannot be ignored (Billings et al, 2020;Sant'Ana et al, 2020;Zhao et al, 2020a). While studies have shown that transformational leadership, inclusive leadership and servant leadership seems to be a suitable leadership style for managing employees working in education sector during this pandemic, there is no evidence on the effectiveness of these leadership styles in hospitals settings and occupational safety offered by these leadership styles (Azizaha et al, 2020;Fournier et al, 2020;Zhao et al, 2020b;Antonopoulou et al, 2021;Piorun et al, 2021). There is an urgent need to implement a leadership style that has a prime focus on the occupational safety of employees so that healthcare workers may feel safe in the hospitals while serving the COVID-19 patients (Labrague and De los Santos, 2020;Rosa et al, 2020;Zhao et al, 2020b).…”

Digital Transformation: Opportunities and Challenges for Leaders in the Emerging Countries in Response to Covid-19 Pandemic

“…On the other hand, digital transformation can be applied at both organizational and individual levels, which is a great advantage, so organizations need to change operating modes, leaders need to proactively absorb and adapt. To achieve efficiency in the digital age became a popular phenomenon [66]. In fact, there is still confusion that a digital leader is the leader of a business or an organization engaged in digital activities.…”

“…However, a digital leader should be understood as someone with digital skills (digital knowledge) with business knowledge and strategic thinking. According to Antonopoulou et al (2021) [66], the digital leader is characterized by strategic leadership, business knowledge to add value to the organization, and digital comprehension to exploit technology trends. By the end of 2020, the great crisis caused by Covid-19 caused strong disturbances in the social life on a worldwide scale, forcing countries to enter a period of accelerating the application of digital technology [67].…”

“…The team led by Antonopoulou et al (2021) [66] revealed that to overcome the challenges of digital transformation, leaders need to develop digital skills, actively adapt to new situations and practices, as well as dealing with immediate complications. The team also found that leadership results are positively correlated with transition leadership and negatively correlated with passive leadership.…”

“…Another difficulty comes from the leader, a successful leader in digital transformation who has a progressive mindset and is able to maintain the relevance of organizational capabilities in an ever-changing context must possess exceptional qualities, all of which begin with a solid knowledge of digital and new technologies [85]. Another difficulty is that they must have the ability to think strategically, to have a wide influence, to have knowledge and leadership capabilities, and especially to have digital knowledge to improve the performance of the organization, to exploit technology trends such as innovation opportunities, digital leadership skills [66]. In fact, there is still confusion that a digital leader is the leader of a business or an organization engaged in digital activities.…”