Making Our Digital World a Better Place: Spiritual Leadership and Digital Transformation

In the dynamic and rapidly advancing digital era, leaders bear a crucial responsibility to steer our worlds to a better place. Spiritual leadership (SL) is today gaining prominence as an alternative leadership approach in an increasingly digital world, particularly for its ability to align ethical values and human-centric principles with the technological and strategic demands of digital transformation (DT) in the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). In this study, we extend the traditional focus of ICT4D from business, social and organisational models to include the role of leadership practices to leverage digital technology. The study, therefore, performed a bibliometric scoping review on the confluence between SL and DT. The key results from 188 publications reveal that DT is primarily studied through a technocentric lens and much less from the leadership view. The continents of Africa, North and South America have not engaged much with SL/DT. There is limited collaboration between countries. DT necessitates reevaluating organisational leadership, moving from classical models to approaches that emphasise human and ethical dimensions. This shift aligns with a growing focus on SL and behavioural psychology in management. The pervasive impact of DT across various sectors underscores its role as a global trend, necessitating adaptive strategies across industries. The study contributes to ICT for Development (ICT4D) and DT literature in charting an alternative approach to the role of digital technology in human and social development. The study also makes recommendations for further research.