Leadership Ideas Shaped by Digital Insights in Higher Education

Abstract

The paper deals with the problem of exploiting the potential of digitalization at scale by organizations in the age of information technologies and advanced analytics of data. Being at the forefront of social progress, universities inspire managers, training staff and students to reset their working, thinking and leading initiatives and embrace digital transformation of the educational environment. The study aims to research the modern thought on transformational leadership befitting universities’ distinguished title of growth engines. The methodological framework comprises modern sociological, psychological, management and complex systems science theories of leadership. The paper analyzes organizational leadership models, explains their weak and strong points, formulates the terms of realizing the leadership phenomenon in the context of digitalization, studies the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation’s experience in introducing the elements of the ‘digital university’ model. The findings support the idea that generative leadership is attainable through inter-layer and inter-cluster interaction of all educational environment members. The paper suggests a mechanism of transforming hierarchical models into generative leadership models. The theoretic and practical significance is the validation of interconditionality of digitalization and a leadership ecosystem as a variety of communications, complexity of interrelations and integrity of functioning of educational leaders.