From digital leadership to talent management: dual innovation pathways of organizational change in digital transformation

Purpose – To unleash the full potential of digital transformation it is necessary to understand and manage the coevolution of technology, organizational processes and human capital systems. This study investigates how digital leadership shapes organizational change that strengthens talent management (TM) through dual innovation pathways. Design/methodology/approach – We designed questionnaires and collected 513 valid responses from firms in the producer services industry in a Chinese province. We employed mediation analysis using Hayes’ Process Macro (Model 4), which is based on multiple regression techniques. Findings – This study found that digital leadership is systematically associated with TM, and that IT innovation and process innovation help explain this alignment by acting as mediating organizational change mechanisms, together reflecting an integrated pattern of organizational change. IT innovation is linked to TM by enabling automation, data-driven coordination and digital integration. Meanwhile, process innovation is associated with the optimization of talent resources through the redesign of workflows and enhanced cross-departmental collaboration. Originality/value – This paper provides empirical evidence that digital leadership, innovation process innovation and TM tend to co-evolve as interrelated dimensions of organizational change during digital transformation. By conceptualizing innovation and process innovation as complementary change mechanisms the study advances a co-evolutionary perspective on how leadership technology organizational processes and TM are jointly reconfigured in digitally transforming organizations.