Leadership and digital transformation in the telecommunications industry in the South African context

Abstract

The telecommunication industry is disrupted by digital transformation and needs to change its current business to a new paradigm of business. The legacy systems and the traditional business model are some of the barriers that challenge innovation in the telecommunication sector. Therefore, the study views organisational capabilities as digital transformation instruments for the telecommunication sectors. The study uses the three concepts emerging from the dynamic capability framework, namely sensing, seizing, and transforming, to determine the leadership competencies required for the digital era. A qualitative generic theory approach was employed, and interviews were conducted with ten senior leadership participants. The result highlighted that digital leaders have direct and indirect impact on digital transformation in their organisations. The findings of this study indicates that leadership in telecommunication must develop digital mindset and open-up their sensing capabilities to diverse value chains and integrate with other industries for sustainability and competitive advantage. The study further highlights that leadership in telecommunication need to create organisational structures and strategies to integrate and increase existing resources and skills while establishing primarily new capabilities. Furthermore, this study suggests that the leadership need to develop competencies that will enable them to continuously mobilise the organisations internal process, people, services, and develop business models that can adapt to rapid changes, foster agility, and create an environment that allows risks, proactiveness and quick decision making. In addition, leadership must foster digital culture that encourage the use of effective and efficient digital tools for customer knowledge exploitation and enablement of fast decision making across all departments in telecommunication companies.