A bibliometric review of research on digital leadership,1991–2025: Implications for digital leadership in education

Rationale of the current review: three motivations

The rationale for conducting the current review is based on the following three motivations.

First, the digitalisation in education and the relatively undeveloped empirical research makes the current review important. With the advancements in educational technology (Owusu et al., 2019), digital leadership has become an important pillar in driving educational reform and promoting school improvement in the digital era (Karakose and Tülübaş, 2023). Undoubtedly, this has brought a need for leaders who are e-skilled to set appropriate directions, manage the team effectively, role model their followers, and makes sensible decisions during digital transformation of their schools (Gupta et al., 2023). Yet, despite the tremendous growth of digitalisation in education, few educational leaders have demonstrated using technology for dissemination of information and effective management (Gupta et al., 2023).

Moreover, there is a notable absence of systematic reviews specifically focused on digital leadership among educational leaders. By 2025, there will be five systematic reviews regarding digital leadership in education. These reviews included 20 publications from 2013 to 2022 (Ratajczak, 2022), 34 publications from 2000 to 2021 (Zhang et al., 2022), 36 publications from 1999 to 2022 (Jameson et al., 2022), 174 publications from 1991 to 2024 (Karakose et al., 2024), and 36 publications from 2019 to 2024 (Peng et al., 2024), respectively. The contributions of these reviews were apparent especially in demonstrating the nature, the benefits and shortcomings, and recommendations for a framework of digital leadership abilities maturity. However, these reviews have their limitations especially regarding the application of the results obtained from these reviews. These reviews focused on a wide range of digital leaders including students, teachers, and university staff rather than purely leaders, so the results may not be unique for educational leaders as the role of educational leaders differs from those of students and teachers.

Finally, bibliometric reviews of the educational digital leadership literature are also lacking. By 2025, only three bibliometric reviews regarding digital leadership in organisations were published. These reviews included 617 publications from 2018 to 2023 (Espina-Romero et al., 2023), 79 publications from 2000 to 2020 (Tigre et al., 2022), and 39 publications from 2002 to 2022 (Banker et al., 2023), respectively. The contributions of these three reviews are apparent especially in demonstrating the evolution, and how digital leadership is conceptualised and operated. However, these reviews have the following limitations. For the reviews by Espina-Romero et al. (2023) and Banker et al. (2023), they did not analyse the intellectual structure, which is a necessary indicator of a knowledge base. Without this dimension, the research traditions and the pattern of their interrelationships could not be analysed. For the review by Tigre et al. (2022), documents from the education domain were excluded; therefore, the results cannot reflect the situation of educational leaders.

Conceptualising digital leadership: three eras

Historically, digital leadership firstly emerged in education, using the term ‘technology leadership’ to connect leadership and technology (Thomas, 1991). Nevertheless, ‘technology leadership’ has not been largely applied and popularised, and was replaced by other terms like e-leadership, virtual leadership, and digital leadership after the early 2000s (Zhang et al., 2022). The evolution of different terms is a response to the scenario at that time. Although progression in digital leadership research might not have been as streamlined as now, three research eras within 35 years can be distinguished that illustrate the growth and evolution of digital leadership research.

The first era we identify as commencing in the early 1990s with a focus on the term ‘technology leadership’. This term was firstly used in education in 1991 (Thomas, 1991), and then in business in 1993 (Martinsons, 1993). Educational scholars defined it as the level of technology abilities by educational leaders (Thomas, 1991). In industry, it was conceptualised as techniques of technology leaders within various technology fields (Bernard et al., 1996). The emergence of this term reflects the profound impact of technological advancements on society, particularly in educational contexts. Over time, technology leadership has increasingly highlighted for its role in the effective and exemplary incorporation of technology within schools (Kearsley and Lynch, 1992). It is noted that ‘technology leadership’ in this period is mainly about techniques that effectively use electronic tools.

In the early 2000s, the second era emerged with a focus on the term ‘e-leadership’ (i.e., electronic leadership). It started to be used within the business context, to refer to a process of social influence driven by information technology to create a change in behaviour, thinking, attitudes, feelings, and/or performance with organisations, groups, and/or individuals (Avolio et al., 2000). It has since been drawn into education domain, primarily related to the implementation of technology in learning and teaching practices. The main reason for the rise of this word is that information technology began to transform leadership and work at the time of this era, therefore, many scholars started to explore the inspirations of information technology on leadership (Avolio and Kahai, 2003). During the same period, a new term ‘virtual leadership’ emerged along with the widespread increase in virtual work environment, which is characterised by high adoption of information and communication technologies (ICT) during collaboration with spatially distributed locations (Hambley et al., 2007). ‘Virtual leadership’ means leading across boundaries through technology, processes, people, and systems (Hambley et al., 2007). With the rising of the online virtual campus, virtual leadership was also introduced to education, referring to “influencing, guiding and motivating the team to ensure the distance education to progress to the purpose” (Hai-Jew, 2004). In this period, ‘e-leadership’ or ‘virtual leadership’ is beyond mere technical proficiency in utilising electronic tools, but a process of leading in a digital context effectively (Roman et al., 2019).

With the rise of the “digital scenario”, the third era of research began in the middle 2010s focusing on the term ‘digital leadership’ (Altinay, 2015). However, as Jameson et al. (2022) observed, there was still no consensus about the definitions of digital leadership. In summary, digital leadership has been defined as ‘a behaviour of doing the right things’ (Sawy et al., 2020) and ‘a complex construct’ (Eberl and Drews, 2021). More specifically, Sawy et al. (2020) regarded it as a behaviour of doing right things to achieve digitalisation in an organisation. Eberl and Drews (2021) regarded it as a complicated construct aiming for a leading-edge, and customer-centred business model. As regards digital leadership in education, there was no consensus on definitions either. In summary, digital leadership in education was defined as ‘the effective use of technology to promote the functioning of schools’ (Yusof et al., 2019) and ‘visionary leadership’ (International Society for Technology in Education, 2023). Specifically, Sheninger (2019) regarded it as “establishing direction, influencing others, initiating sustainable change and leading the digital transformation of the school through access to information”. The Standards for Administrators (ISTE-A) (2023), states that school leaders “inspire and lead development and implementation of a shared vision that maximises use of digital age resources to meet and exceed learning goals and support effective instructional practice” in the digital age. Overall, ‘digital leadership’ is a more transformational and extensive concept than ‘e-leadership’, ‘technology leadership’, and ‘virtual leadership’, because it is not only about ‘techniques’ and ‘process’, but has transformed into a way of behaving and thinking in a digital era (Tigre et al., 2022). The third era is considered to be comparatively integrative and holistic, as it illustrates a logical progress enabling better understandings of the holistic large scale digital transformation in situations (Jameson et al., 2022).

In sum, over three decades, the concept of ‘technology leadership’ was firstly applied in 1991, then ‘e-leadership’ and ‘virtual leadership’ emerged and was widely used from the early 2000s, finally digital leadership was used from the middle 2010s. The core nature of digital leadership has changed from a technique (the first era) to an influencing process mediated by information technology (the second era), then to a way of thinking and behaving (the third era). This indicates digital leadership in the organisational literature evolved parallel to digital leadership in education.

Review of theoretical framework for bibliometric review

Hallinger and Kovačević (2022) proposed a theoretical framework of the knowledge base that was especially relevant to guide bibliometric reviews. In the current review, the framework consists of four dimensions. Size concerns the overall volume of literature in the digital leadership field. Time means the publication trajectories of digital leadership topic (in our case during 1991–2025). Spatiality illuminates the geographic distribution of academic research in digital leadership. Composition concerns the intellectual structure of research foci in digital leadership (Zupic and Čater, 2015).

The present review

The current review established two databases based on two sets of literature, digital leadership in general and in education. Specifically, three research questions are propounded:

Q1. What is the overall volume and growth trajectory of literature in the knowledge base of digital leadership in general and in education (size and time dimensions by citation analysis)?

Bibliometric techniques

Co-citation means the frequency that two documents, journals, or authors are cited at the same time (Small, 1973). For instance, if two cited documents are seen in the same reference list, they are co-cited (Small, 1973). Similarly, author co-citation was employed to explore the links between the authors of the influential documents and reveal the intellectual structure of this field (White and Griffith, 1981). Co-occurrence is to establish potential relationships and thus provides an overview of the conceptual structure through the keywords (Zupic and Čater, 2015).

Research criteria and procedures

Data screen

The researchers checked if the documents fitted the inclusion and exclusion criteria (Figure 1). First, researcher 1 glanced over the abstracts to delete inappropriate documents because of source type, languages, participants, and topic relevance. At this stage, 1189 documents were removed. Second, the researcher excluded 503 duplicate documents. Third, the researcher scanned through full documents to check research participants (for empirical papers). In this step, 1529 documents were ruled out. Fourth, researcher 2 checked the remaining documents a second time and guaranteed they all fitted the inclusion and exclusion criteria. In this step, 12 documents were excluded. Finally, a total of 557 documents remained in our datasets for further analysis. Of these, 142 out of 557 documents are from the education domain, constituting the database of digital leadership in education. This review thus comprises two research databases, namely, database of digital leadership in general (415) and database of digital leadership in education (142).

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Figure 1.

Flow chart of search and screening process.

Volume and growth trajectory

To meet this goal, the researchers calculated the publication numbers across the time frame.

Volume and growth trajectory in digital leadership in general

On the whole, a positive growth trend can be seen in the number of publications throughout the past 33 years (Figure 2). Publications on digital leadership in general first appeared in 1993 (Martinsons, 1993). However, this theme did not attract considerable interest over the following 19 years. For the next 14 years (2012–2025), literature growth slightly, with publications rising from less than two per year in the earlier period to over 20 per year in the last few years. In 2012, publication first exceeded two digits and began to take off after a short-term volatility. Since 2021, in 5 years, 290 documents were published and accounted for 69.88% of the overall volume of the past 33 years.

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Figure 2.

Cumulative growth in the number of source documents.

Geographical distribution

To answer Research question 2, the researchers analysed the volume per region.

Geographical distribution in digital leadership in general

The spatiality dimension showed that this topic has aroused wide attention with academic output from 63 countries in total (Figure 3), including developing countries like Malaysia (e.g., Khaw et al., 2022), Indonesia (e.g., Kustiyono and Manongga, 2023), and Turkey (e.g., Erhan et al., 2022). Nonetheless, sharp discrepancies exist between different regions. For instance, academic output was mainly from the United States, far higher than the second country. The publications in the six leading countries (i.e., United States, 70; Indonesia, 43; China, 28; UK, 26; Germany, 23; and India, 22) accounted for more than half (51.08%) of the overall volume.

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Figure 3.

Worldwide distribution of digital leadership literature. Notes: Some countries are not present in the legend for the conciseness.

Intellectual structure

To answer research question 3, author co-citation analysis was employed to check the occurrence rate of authors being cited together.

Intellectual structure in digital leadership in general

A map featuring 114 co-cited authors was generated using a minimum threshold of 30 citations (Figure 4). The intellectual structure of literature on digital leadership consists of five clusters.

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Figure 4.

Comparison of author co-citation map of digital leadership literature in general and in education. Notes: In general (threshold 30, display 114 authors, 5 clusters); in education (threshold 10, display 105 authors, 4 clusters).

“Preparation of organisations in digital transformation” (red cluster) is the biggest one, which includes 55 key scholars like Teece, Kane, and Hess. Scholars in this cluster examined organisations’ readiness for the digital world. Additionally, they investigated the actions organisations need to take and what they have already implemented in their digital transformation efforts. Topics include strategies for digital transformation (e.g., Hess et al., 2016) and the extent to which organisations are prepared for a digital future (e.g., Kane et al., 2015).

“Challenges in managing virtual teams” (green cluster) is the second one with 27 key scholars. Two oldest documents within the five clusters appear in this cluster, namely, a seminal paper about distant leadership by Waldman and Yammarino (1999) and a seminal paper about e-leadership by Avolio et al. (2000). The former demonstrates a leader's challenges in practising management through symbolic behaviours, ideologically based vision, sagas, and storytelling (Waldman and Yammarino, 1999). The latter points out that one of the challenges leaders faced is understanding how virtual team members “work out task interdependencies, resolve issues involving tradeoffs among various perspectives, and develop solutions and approaches that build upon the diversity of expertise” (Avolio et al., 2000).

“Interrelation between technology and leadership” (blue cluster) is the third one, including 16 key scholars like Van wart and Wang, X. Scholars in this cluster seemed to investigate the impact of technology in shaping leadership style and the function of the organisations. For instance, Van wart provides empirical research of integrating ICT usage problems into leadership in his work (e.g., Liu et al., 2018).

The yellow cluster with 9 authors indicates the fourth one, the “effects of digital leadership”. Influential scholars in this cluster include Asbari and Purwanto. Scholars investigated the impacts of digital leadership on communication effectiveness, employees’ job performance, and organisations’ performance. For example, Purwanto explored the impact of digital leadership on business performance (e.g., Lusiani et al., 2020).

“Components for effective digital leadership” (purple cluster) is the last one with 7 scholars like Mackenzie. Scholars in this cluster seemed to seek the critical abilities to thrive in a digital age. For instance, Mackenzie (2010) indicated that the foundational elements for effective digital leadership include building trust with team members and improving communication skills.

To better explore the development trajectory of the intellectual base, the 31-year time span was separated into three periods: 1993–2007, 2008–2017, and 2018–2025 (Figure 5). The interval was 15 years, 10 years, and 8 years, respectively. Author co-citation technique was again applied to the three periods independently. In the first 15 years, scholars concentrated on the future of leadership (e.g., Bass, 2000), the difference between leading in the past and in the future, the raised issues of digital age, and people's current knowledge on leading in a digital age (e.g., Kahai, 2010). Restricted by low publication volume (9 documents), scholars’ interests seemed to scatter and did not cluster in a clear-cut manner. The research focus was later expanded to the nature and role of leadership (e.g., Kayworth and Leidner, 2002), the evolvement of theory, research, and practice on e-leadership (e.g., Avolio et al., 2014), as well as the implementation of digital leadership (e.g., Sambamurthy and Zmud, 1999). In this second period, research perspectives became more specific. In the latest period, research perspectives continued to diverge to topics like the components for effective digital leadership (e.g., Kane et al., 2019), the necessity for virtual leadership due to the changes in work context during and after Covid-19, the elements (e.g., Kniffin et al., 2021) and effects of e-leadership (e.g., Cortellazzo et al., 2019). To sum up, the trajectory of the intellectual base has been demonstrated to be divergent during the past 31 years.

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Figure 5.

Development patterns of digital leadership in general.

Intellectual structure in digital leadership in education

A map featuring 105 co-cited authors was generated using a minimum threshold of 10 citations. Four clusters have been identified (Figure 4).

“Theory and practice of school technology leadership” (red cluster) is the biggest one with 36 scholars like Anderson and Afshari. This cluster has the most-cited document within the four clusters, namely, a paper about principals’ technology leadership by Flanagan and Jacobsen (2003). This document examined the critical role of educational leaders as technology leaders, outlining barriers to ICT integration and proposing a five-part leadership model to foster effective technology use across early childhood and K-12 schools. Topics covered include investigation of prevalence and effect of technology leadership in school (e.g., Anderson and Dexter, 2005).

The second largest cluster is “challenges and promotion strategies of digital school leadership” (green cluster), which includes 31 key scholars like Cortellazzo and Chua. Scholars in this cluster seemed to investigate the challenges that school leaders encounter when implementing digital leadership, as well as the strategies they can adopt to create a supportive atmosphere for digital integration. Cortellazzo demonstrated that alongside the intrinsic uncertainty and pressure associated with digital technologies, crises present considerable difficulties for leadership processes (Bauwens and Cortellazzo, 2025). Chua not only investigated improved strategies for fostering a virtual learning environment in schools (Chua and Chua, 2017b), but also created a foundational model for practices in educational technology leadership (Chua and Chua, 2017a).

The blue cluster with 19 authors like Yusof and Zhong is the third cluster, the “indicators and measurement of digital leadership in education”. Scholars in this cluster appeared to investigate the specific criteria and tools used to assess how effectively school leaders are integrating digital technologies. Yusof et al. (2019) established a measurement model of virtual instructional leadership in schools.

The yellow cluster with 19 authors is the last cluster, the “effects of digital leadership”. Influential scholars include Raman, Albion and Thannimalai. Scholars in this cluster explored the effects of principals’ technology leadership on teachers’ technology integration (e.g., Otto and Albion, 2002; Raman et al., 2014) as well as on schools’ effectiveness (e.g., Davies, 2010).

As for the development trajectory of the intellectual base, the 35-year time span was separated into three periods: 1991–2005, 2006–2015 and 2016–2025. As Figure 6 showed, in the first 15 years, scholars concentrated on technology leadership in the educational system (e.g., Kearsley, 1990) and the emergence of e-leadership (e.g., Avolio and Kahai, 2003). The small number of publications (4 documents) made scholars’ interests scattered. The research focus was later expanded to the theory and practice of school technology leadership (e.g., Kahai et al., 2013), the prevalence of school technology leadership (e.g., Anderson and Dexter, 2005), and the role of leadership in schools’ ICT integration (e.g., Law et al., 2008). In this period, research started to give more prominence to the implementation of digital leadership (e.g., Liu et al., 2018). In the latest period, scholars devote continuous attention to the implementation of digital leadership among school leaders (e.g., Liu et al., 2018). Additionally, research perspectives were further deepened, from theory and practice (e.g., Kahai et al., 2013), to effect (e.g., Ibrahim et al., 2018) and challenges of digital leadership (e.g., Richardson and McLeod, 2011), as well as promotion strategies for enhancing e-leadership practices in school (e.g., Chua and Chua, 2017b). Overall, divergence was the main feature of the trajectory of the intellectual base during the past 35 years.

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Figure 6.

Development patterns of literature of digital leadership in education.

Volume and growth trajectory

The volume and growth trajectory showed the size and time of the knowledge base. The two comparisons, namely, “between-group comparison” (i.e., the reviews by Espina-Romero et al., 2023; Tigre et al., 2022; and Banker et al., 2023) as well as “within-group comparison” have demonstrated similar developmental trajectories. As for the “between-group comparison”, the publishing trend was similar, but the current review covers a greater time span (1991–2025 for the current review; 2008–2023 for the review by Espina-Romero et al., 2023; 2000–2020 for the review by Tigre et al., 2022; and 2002–2022 for the review by Banker et al., 2023). Likewise, the “within-group comparison” reveals a similar trajectory, except that the document on digital leadership in education (1991) appears two years earlier than digital leadership in general (1993). In detail, this research stream gained massive momentum during Covid-19. One obvious reason is that Covid-19 fostered the popularity of teleworking, virtual work, dispersed teams, and remote management (Kirchner et al., 2021). Specific to education, the use of virtual office platforms (e.g., Google Meet and Zoom) has suddenly become common among school leaders (Yusof et al., 2023). Ertz and Leblanc-Proulx (2018) conclude that the digital leadership topic remains in an early developmental phase and will continue to draw substantial research attention, concerning not only the emerging subject but also the growth rate of documents volume in recent years (Zeike et al., 2019). Nevertheless, additional time and solid evidence are required to determine if this fluctuation will continue or is only a temporary occurrence.

Turning to the implications of these findings, from a theoretical perspective, this finding highlights the relevance of the dynamic capability framework in digital leadership (Mosconi et al., 2024). The significant increase in research activity during and after the Covid-19 suggests that organisations had to rapidly adapt their leadership approaches to leverage new digital tools effectively. From a practical perspective, educational leaders are urged to actively adapt to these changes by prioritising investments in training and support systems for digital tools. This will enable their teams to develop the essential skills required to thrive in these increasingly virtual environments.

Geographical distribution

The geographical distribution of the documents showed the spatiality dimension of the research field. The “between-group comparison” showed that the number of countries contributing to the literature on digital leadership was similar and the United States was the country that contributes most to the digital leadership literature. Meanwhile the “within-group comparison” revealed both similarity and difference. The main similarity is that certain countries significantly influenced the geographical contributions. For digital leadership in general, the proportion of literature from the United States is more than one-sixth of the overall volume (70, 16.87%). This distribution pattern is in line with reviews from other relevant domains of educational leadership (Chen and Cheng, 2022), where the United States usually takes the lead. As for publication of educational digital leadership, the current study found that publications from countries in Asia and Africa account for 67.61% of the total volume, indicating a positive trend towards the formation of a global knowledge base. The exact reason remains unknown, but potentially lies in the governments’ emphasis on “Education 4.0” in recent years (Quddus et al., 2020).

The main difference lies in the influence of the publications from the leading countries in two sets. For digital leadership in general, the country with the maximum amount of publications (i.e., the United States) also has the top 5 most-cited documents, indicating its substantial impact. The researchers couldn’t pinpoint the precise causes but speculated that socio-economic progress may influence academic advancement (Hallinger, 2019). As for publication of digital leadership in education, the rankings of documents’ citation numbers from the top 2 leading countries (i.e., Malaysia and Turkey) were relatively low. One of the possible reasons is that the documents of Turkey and Malaysia mostly come from the recent four years, leaving insufficient time to build citations (Zupic and Čater, 2015). Another reason is that the influence in the education field of these countries is limited.

Considering the implications of these findings, from a theoretical standpoint, this geographical distribution challenges existing theories of knowledge diffusion, suggesting that digital leadership knowledge is becoming increasingly decentralised and globally distributed. On a practical level, educational policymakers should recognise this shift and consider fostering international collaborations to share best practices in digital leadership, particularly leveraging the emerging contributions from Asia and Africa.

Intellectual structure

The co-cited authors map demonstrates the intellectual structure (composition dimension) of digital leadership. The “between-group comparison” with the review by Tigre et al. (2022) showed that the clusters in the current research are smaller but more focused. Specifically, cluster 1 in Tigre's research, which demonstrates the characterisation of virtual teams and the challenges concerning their functioning and dynamics in the organisations, was fragmented into two sub-areas of research in our study, namely, the preparation of organisations in digital transformation (i.e., cluster 1) and leadership challenges in managing virtual teams (i.e., cluster 2). Such differentiation in current research is a response to the evolution of the topics of recent publications.

Meanwhile, the “within-group comparison” revealed both similarity and difference. The main similarity lies in the divergent development patterns of the intellectual structure in the two sets. One possible explanation of the divergence in “digital leadership in general” is that the emerging trends, the changing digital scenario, and the new developments in technology may reshape the focus of research and identify some topics as a field of study (Tigre et al., 2022). Specific to education, the differentiation may be related to the constantly-appearing new phenomena and new requirements in education, as well as the particularity of this field (e.g., examination results, government policies, assessment, and curricula) (Davies, 2010; Hallinger, 2019).

The differences are manifested in mainly two aspects. First, the topics of digital leadership in general are at a more macroscopic level, while topics in education are at a specific operational level. The former includes the nature or roots of digital leadership as well as the basic theory on digital leadership that can widely apply to other domains including business, psychology, or government (see the cluster named “the interrelation between technology and leadership”) (e.g., the nature in Liu et al., 2018). With a view to implementation in the education domain, the latter explored the indicators, measurement, challenges, promotion strategies of digital leadership (e.g., indicators in Sheninger, 2013). Second, the key foci among scholars’ research in the cluster of “the effects of digital leadership” (i.e., a common cluster in both sets) from two sets are subtly different. The scholars on digital leadership in general focused mainly on its influence on business performance (e.g., in Lusiani et al., 2020). Apart from education performance, educational scholars also explored its impact on teachers’ development and teaching practice across different educational levels. These impacts include improved access to ICT in early childhood education (Han, 2022), enhanced professional development opportunities and curriculum innovation at K-12 schools (Otto and Albion, 2002), as well as strengthened technology integration in higher education (Jameson, 2013). The exploration of the impact on teachers’ development and teaching practice may be an echo of an OECD report (2023) Teaching for the Future: Global Engagement, Sustainability and Digital Skills, which analyses how to high-quality teachers’ development and improve their teaching practices in digital age. Overall, compared with educational scholars, scholars on digital leadership in general follow with interest the issues or phenomena that take place across fields. This conclusion is unsurprising given the existence of a “field variation” or “field-dependence” phenomenon (Radicchi et al., 2008).

In light of these findings, from a theoretical perspective, this shift in intellectual structure suggests a need to refine existing leadership theories to incorporate the specific challenges and dynamics of digital environments, thereby paving the way for future theoretical advancements. Practically, practitioners should utilise these insights to develop targeted training programmes that address specific challenges faced by educational leaders, ensuring they are equipped with relevant skills and strategies (Faust and Price, 2020) as well as digital awareness and vision (Cheng et al., 2024).