Digitalisation and its impact on leadership competences in production work

This contribution tackles the effects of digitalisation on leadership in production work. Based on the assumption that production work in the future will be characterised as more flexible, networked and digitalised, the digital transformation will lead to changes in business models, organisations and work design.
Accordingly, changed and new competences are needed by executives. There is a new generation of executives who have to view business differently and use different sets of competences to lead employees.
In this paper, an overview will be given about digital trends and their impact on leadership. Secondly, definitions of terms about leadership and the difference between traditional management and digital leadership will be illustrated. Furthermore, competence sets for leadership in digital transformation in production work will be outlined. These competence sets can be described both by several competences subsumed under the term "interactional competences" and by competences needed to establish a work design conducive to learning, facilitating and enabling competence development of employees. We think that these two competence bunches depict the core of future competences of executives in production.