Digital Leadership and AI-Enabled Organizational Transformation in Higher Education Institutions

Abstract

The digital transformation is reshaping Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and institutions must be effectively managed by good leadership and smart technologies to boost the performance and competitiveness of their institutions. There has been little empirical evidence available to investigate the role of digital leadership in the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and in organizational change in higher education systems, however. It aims to discuss the interdependencies of digital leadership, Artificial Intelligence and organizational transformation and institutional competitiveness in HEIs. This study employed the cross-sectional survey quantitative research design and collected its data from 65 respondents from the higher education institutions in India including faculty members, academic administrators, academic leaders and IT employees. The proposed conceptual model was tested using the software of Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) available in the SmartPLS 4 software. The results show that digital leadership has a significant impact on AI adoption (???? = 0.565, ???? < 0.001) and organizational transformation (???? = 0.426, ???? < 0.001). The adoption of AI also has a significant effect on organization transformation (???? = 0.388, ???? < 0.001), whereas organization transformation has a strong impact on the institutional competitiveness (???? = 0.578, ???? < 0.001). The mediation effect of AI use in the digital leadership-organizational transformation linkage was confirmed in the mediation analysis as well. The study fills the gaps of the studies on information science and digital transformation because of the integration of leadership capability, intelligent technology adoption and organizational transformation. The findings provide practical suggestions to education leaders and policy makers to improve their institutions through digital leadership and AI.