Challenges and Opportunities for Ethical Leadership in the Digital Post-Industrial Era

Digital technology is pervasive in our private and working lives, bringing about profound positive and negative changes at both societal and business levels that impact humankind. The present research addresses the issue of how digital transformation in companies might contribute to changing the traditional idea of business leadership and determines which ethical challenges and opportunities arise under the new digital paradigm using an ethics-leadership model. Thus, on the one hand, it is essential to acknowledge that there has been a change from a leader-centric notion of leadership to a collective view; on the other hand, it is possible to observe that certain traditional elements of leadership ethics, such as responsibility, are absent from the digital leadership discussion, whereas other notions, such as power, need to be comprehended from a new perspective. The current article can expand business practitioners’ and researchers’ understanding of ethical digital leadership.