The differential impacts of top management support and transformational supervisory leadership on employees’ digital performance

Abstract

ABSTRACT How do leaders across different hierarchies motivate employees’ job performance in the new digital age? In order to answer this under-investigated question, we first conceptualise digital performance as employees’ job performance that is attained through using the new generation of digital technologies and then propose a research model that integrates and differentiates the influential mechanisms of the dual leadership factors – top management support and transformational supervisory leadership – regarding employees’ digital-enabled task performance and innovative performance. Specifically, we tested the research model with two different samples, including 230 sales personnel from a large automobile manufacturing company and 206 employees from multiple joint ventures across different industries. We find that top management support exhibits a stronger influence on digital-enabled task performance than on innovative performance through the mediation of data-driven culture, while transformational supervisory leadership nurtures a stronger effect on digital-enabled innovative performance than on task performance through the mediation of digital self-efficacy. Our study consolidates and extends the technology use literature on management support and advances IS leadership theory to the digital context. Our findings also offer practical insights into the effective use of the new generation of digital technologies in organisations.