Digital Leadership and Safety Performance in Construction Projects: The Role of Employee Competence and Adaptive Leadership

Construction projects are increasingly shaped by digital tools such as BIM, IoT-based monitoring, digital twins, and real-time project platforms, yet safety performance remains uneven because these technologies must be interpreted, coordinated, and applied by people. This study examines whether digital leadership is associated with safety performance in construction projects through task- and safety-related employee competence and whether adaptive leadership conditions this relationship. Drawing on Dynamic Capabilities Theory (DCT) and Social Exchange Theory (SET), the study develops a framework in which digital leadership is treated as a leadership capability linked to competence development, while adaptive leadership represents a contextual leadership condition that may strengthen this capability-building process. Data were collected from 487 construction professionals in Türkiye and analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). The results indicate that digital leadership is positively associated with safety performance and task- and safety-related employee competence, and that employee competence is positively associated with safety performance. The indirect relationship between digital leadership and safety performance through employee competence is also significant. Adaptive leadership strengthens the relationship between digital leadership and employee competence and reinforces the conditional indirect effect, although it does not significantly moderate the direct relationship between digital leadership and safety performance. These findings suggest that safer digital project environments depend not only on technology adoption but also on leadership practices that support procedural knowledge, risk awareness, emergency response capability, and adaptation under changing project conditions. The study contributes to research on digital project delivery, construction safety, and leadership by clarifying how technology-oriented leadership and task- and safety-related human capability are associated with safety performance.