This article presents an instrument for measuring the construct of digital leadership competence at the computer workstation. Digitalization is considered one of the mega-trends that is causing profound social change in the sense of a transformation of living and working environments [1].

Traum et al. (2017), as part of the KODIMA project, developed a definition that explicitly includes the working individual affected by digitalization:

“Digitalization is the introduction or increased use of information and communication technologies (ICT) by (working) individuals, organizations, economic sectors and societies with the characteristic consequences of acceleration, increasing abstractness, flexibilization, and individualization of processes and outcomes.” [2]

Piasecki (2020) draws a narrower frame of reference around municipal administrations and describes digitalization as “essentially the shift of administrative tasks to a new digital level and the integration of traditional (paper-based) processes into computer-based processing structures to optimize results and accelerate procedures” [3]. The goal of work-related digitalization is the transition to the world of work 4.0, in which routine activities are replaced by knowledge-based decision-making with complex, dynamically changing activities. Thus, office work can be organized and designed more individually. The expansion of existing technologies encourages mobile working at flexible workplaces with flexible working hours [4]. Work 4.0, has established itself as a signal term referring to the fundamental structural change in gainful employment resulting from advancing digitalization [5]. Digital and mobile communication enable companies to collaborate and coordinate over greater spatial distance as well as with temporal flexibility. It also facilitates access to specialized knowledge, expertise, and resources [6]. A variety of new work models result from the changing work opportunities. Boundaries in different areas, such as between locations, companies, customers, and workforces are becoming increasingly blurred [6]. Routine activities become more and more automated, so much that tasks for employees can be designed to be more cross-functional and cross-divisional. Their work becomes increasingly information-based. The targeted further qualification of the workforce is of crucial importance [6].

Consequently, also the demands on managers are subject to digital transformation processes, which is reflected in society’s understanding of leadership. The concept of employee leadership and the demands placed on managers keep changing as digitalization progresses.

In general, leadership is required whenever several people work on problem solutions in a division of labor with need for coordination [7, 8]. “The increasing complexity of organizations and work requires leaders to manage people as effectively and efficiently as possible” [8]. Socially, the notion of leadership is evolving since the beginning of the twentieth century from unidirectional control to a holistic, reciprocal influence in which leaders solicit and use employee feedback for advancement [9, 10].

Targeting digital leadership culture, Meier et al. (2017) extracted four key characteristics from the interactive leadership approach: collaborative, integer and social, inspiring and open, fostering resilience [11].

As in literature the term digital leadership is not defined consistently, different emphases are placed on it. Promsri (2019) compiles 64 characteristics of digital leadership in a review paper and aggregates them into six key characteristics of a digital leader [12]:

(1)

Digital knowledge and literacy - knowledge of the possibilities of digitalization-related changes;

(2)

Vision - clear objective regarding desired digital transformation processes;

(3)

Customer focus - taking into account the expectations and wishes of customers with regard to digital processes;

(4)

Agility - good adaptability toward the rapidly changing work processes;

(5)

Risk-taking (creation of an experimental atmosphere) - establishing a culture of constructive criticism that enables trial and error as well as innovation;

(6)

Collaboration - strengthening the cooperation among employees in terms of location, time, culture, etc.

Overall, there is an observable trend from rigid, hierarchical management toward dynamic decision-making processes with flat hierarchies, joint decision-making and changing responsibilities. Social skills become increasingly relevant alongside expert knowledge [6, 11, 12]. This trend is expressed in the empowerment approach [13]. Individual, employee-related empowerment aims to influence the perception of the employee role positively. Accordingly, the perception of one’s own significance, competence, self-determination, and influence during work should be strengthened [13]. Central connections to successful digital work can be found in the experienced self-determination and the experienced influence on the working process. This goes hand in hand with greater freedom of choice for employees regarding working hours, work location and the sequence of working processes. Flattened hierarchies in project groups also enable and require self-organization with changing leadership role focused on personal skills [4, 6].

The results of current reviews [14, 15] indicate that positive leadership styles and behaviors are associated with better health, less health complaints and less stress experience. Negative leadership behaviors as a risk factor are analyzed significantly less. Nevertheless, the reviews point out that negative leadership behavior is associated with low psychological well-being, lower job satisfaction and higher sick leave [15]. The “health-oriented leadership” (HoL) approach of Franke and Felfe goes beyond these studies and provides a broader model of health-specific leadership behavior. Within this approach, more aspects of a leader’s communication and the health-promoting design of working conditions are integrated. In addition, values and awareness of managers towards the health of their employees as well as the awareness and behavior of the employees themselves are addressed [16].

From the transformation processes described above, a need for evaluating digital leadership styles can be derived. A particular need arises in Germany around municipal administrations. This is due to the fact that they are, for example, obligated to keep digital records and offer electronic citizen services according to the framework of the Act to Promote Electronic Administration in North Rhine-Westphalia. While it is also called E-Government Act and the municipal administrations have accepted the challenge, there is a need to operationalize digital leadership.

Existing approaches for constructing an index of digital leadership competence refer to small and medium-sized enterprises [17], are based on a survey of the executives themselves [18], or do not have a sufficient number of cases for validation [19]. Other existing approaches are used for personnel selection and classification of managers [20, 21].

The score proposed in the following, on the other hand, is based on the subjective perspective of managed employees at VDU workstations in municipal administrations and was developed as part of the project “Health and Digital Change” (GudW), in which it is also being tested. The score is called “DigiFuehr” due to the German word “Führung”, which means leadership. The following hypotheses are to be tested:

1.

The items of the DigiFuehr score have a high discriminatory power, i.e. all items have at least medium correlations with the remaining overall construct (r > .3).

2.

The DigiFuehr score measures a one-dimensional construct, i.e., in a principal component analysis only one factor can be extracted that has an eigenvalue greater than one (EV > 1).

3.

The items of the DigiFuehr score are homogeneous, i.e. they show at least medium correlations among each other (r > .3).

4.

The items of the DigiFuehr score are highly reliable, i.e. they show a high internal consistency (α > .8).

5.

The DigiFuehr score can be construct-validated via an analogous summative score to classic leadership (called “ClassicFuehr”), i.e., the two scores have at least a medium correlation with each other (r > .3).