Leadership in a Digital Transformation : An Exploratory Interview Study on How Managers Could Promote Employee Resilience

All managers are likely to experience situations where their employees encounter setbacks and challenges. How individuals respond to workplace setbacks or challenges is going to be determined by their level of resilience. Resilient employees are likely to take charge and bring about change, making them highly desirable in a business environment characterized by digital transformation and continuous change. Despite this, there is scarce research on how employee resilience could be promoted by managers. Therefore, this study targets that gap by exploring how the leadership dimensions individualized consideration and intellectual stimulation could promote employee resilience. Utilizing a sample of 10 employees who were currently undergoing a digital transformation, an exploratory interview study was conducted to capture the experience of employees. An abductive thematic analysis was used to analyze the findings, meaning that our theoretical framework played a guiding role in coding and thematic development. The findings showed that individualized consideration and intellectual stimulation were both important to promote employee resilience. However, the presence of individualized consideration was found to be necessary for intellectual stimulation to promote employee resilience. Thus, it was concluded that managers need to primarily focus on individualized consideration prior to engaging in intellectual stimulation to create a strong foundation for a change process