Impact of Digital Leadership of Manufacturing Companies on Digital Business Performance*

Purpose: In this study, investigate the effect of digital leadership of manufacturing companies on digital management performance, and among them, the relationship between digital readiness, digital transformation, and digital platform capabilities was investigated. The purpose of this study was to provide implications through empirical analysis. Research design, data, and methodology: This study derived a hypothesis through a literature review and verified it using PLS. A sample was taken from 132 employees or higher with an understanding of digital marketing and work relevance (direct or indirect) from a manufacturing company that conducts digital marketing in Korea, and the results of verifying the hypothesis are as follows. Results: The results for study revealed that, first, it was confirmed that digital leadership did not directly affect digital transformation. Second, digital leadership was found to have a significant positive effect on digital readiness. Third, it was found that digital leadership had a significant positive effect on digital platform capability. Fourth, digital readiness was found to have a significant positive effect on digital transformation. Fifth, it was found that digital platform capability had a significant positive effect on digital transformation. Finally, it was found that digital transformation had a significant positive effect on digital business performance. Conclusions: First, it was confirmed that digital leadership had a positive effect on digital readiness. Accordingly, the CEO of a manufacturing company should secure a competitive advantage by implementing and managing digital leadership in the process of preparing digital technology so that it can positively affect the organization's digital transformation and digital business performance. The importance of the CEO's leadership is always emerging, but it is not implemented and it is difficult to prepare and manage digital technology. Therefore, the CEO must manage the organization's digital readiness to improve through digital leadership in order to affect the performance of the digital business. Through this, it is thought that the competitive advantage in the market, corporate awareness, and customer satisfaction will also improve through the use and development of various digital technologies such as automated business processing and customer information analysis of manufacturing companies in the future. Second, it was confirmed that digital leadership had a positive effect on digital platform capabilities. Accordingly, the CEO of a manufacturing company needs to manage the organization's digital platform capabilities through digital leadership, and plan management activities to improve the digital business and grow the digital business. This digital platform capability is the capability to produce, search, deliver, and coordinate big data through capabilities such as creating consumer inflow content and collecting customer information (De Reuber et al., 2018), and through this, it is thought that it will be possible to secure a competitive advantage of a company and improve customer satisfaction while providing a better environment for products and services to customers. Third, it was confirmed that digital readiness, digital platform capabilities, and digital transformation all affect digital business performance in the relationship between digital leadership and digital business performance. However, it was confirmed that digital leadership and digital transformation did not have a direct effect. In other words, the CEO must strive to improve the importance of digital readiness and digital platform capabilities for digital business performance, and the implementation and management of digital leadership is necessary to maximize these areas and affect digital business performance. In addition, it is thought that unity and practice at the organizational level are necessary to think about digital innovation and secure a competitive advantage in the digital era.