The future of leadership—How is leadership in small and medium-sized enterprises going to change?

Abstract

This paper in the Journal Gruppe. Interaktion. Organisation. (GIO) addresses changes in leadership through digitalization and their consequences for leaders. For years, digitalization has been heralding changes such as increasing leadership at a distance or use of digital communication media. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) now face the task of coping with these changes and have to contend with major uncertainties: What are major determining trends for leaders in SMEs? Which changes will shape leadership and how will they change leadership tasks and success-critical behavior? In semi-structured interviews with seven experts from SMEs we have explored these questions. Trends expected by the experts describe changes in the organizational structures and in work within the company. Structurally, companies will become more agile and diverse, hierarchies will play a less strong role and companies will cooperate more closely with each other. Work will become more location-independent, more influenced by Big Data and many tasks will be made easier or taken over by technology. In relation to established models of leadership tasks and behavior, the experts see a clear shift in tasks in favor of managing human resources, including the development of employees through coaching and the transfer of responsibility. In addition to previous tasks, the experts see managing change as a new task area. This area consists of accompanying change, acting flexibly and agilely, communicating openly and transparently and allowing failure. With regard to changes in success-critical behavior, leaders have to show more strategy orientation, communicate clearly and be open to new ideas and further development.

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