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.
Highlights
Societies and their higher educational institutions have been developing in a cross-functional mode, the latter being the development basis for social and economic prosperity
The findings support the idea that generative leadership is attainable through inter-layer and inter-cluster interaction of all educational environment members
In the face of dynamic content development of society, universities’ top executives, educators and instructional designers formulate the functional goals of university education in compliance with the requirements of social progress, set the targets and direct the colleagues’ activity within the framework of the educational environment
Summary
Societies and their higher educational institutions have been developing in a cross-functional mode, the latter being the development basis for social and economic prosperity. Having reviewed leadership models in the management, psychological, pedagogical and sociological aspects, we move on to considering the leadership phenomenon from the perspective of complexity science The concepts of this theory open up opportunities for progress and innovation in higher education because they view leadership as a process evolving in terms of interlayer and inter-cluster crosswise interaction and affecting all members of cross-organizational communication. The scientific approach to leadership as an emergent property of complex systems evolving as a cumulative property of numerous inter-cluster interactions is of today the foremost and pertinent to the goals set for higher education by society in the age of digitalization of all focus areas It is from the perspective of emergent leadership that it turns to be possible to determine the transformational leadership potential of such a complex system as a university
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