The penetration effect of digital leadership on digital transformation: the role of digital strategy consensus and diversity types

Purpose Successful digital transformation involves all areas which bring new impacts and challenges to the leadership of the enterprise. From the perspective of organizational identification, the authors construct a theoretical model of digital leadership–digital strategic consensus–digital transformation and explore the different moderated mediation effects of diversity types. Design/methodology/approach This paper obtains data from 351 Chinese science and technology enterprises and uses regression analysis and bootstrap analysis to test the research hypotheses. Findings The results demonstrate that digital leadership has a positive impact on digital transformation. Digital strategic consensus partially mediates the linkage between digital leadership and digital transformation. Disparity diversity and variety diversity positively moderate the mediating role of digital strategic consensus between digital leadership and digital transformation, respectively; and separation diversity negatively moderates the mediating role of digital strategic consensus between digital leadership and digital transformation. Originality/value The research innovatively measures digital leadership and digital transformation. It expands the application of leadership, strategic consensus, diversity and other related theories in a digital context and provides a decision-making basis for enterprises' digital transformation.