Exploring the Nexus of Digital Leadership and Digital Literacy on Higher Education Performance: The Role of Digital Innovation

Industry 4.0 has affected various aspects of life, including the organization of higher education. In the current era, higher education is required to transform themselves from using the conventional way of administration to the digitalized one. The said transformation also includes the services provided and management carried out by the organizations. The objective of this study is to measure the understudied mediation of digital innovation in the effect of the nexus of digital leadership and digital literacy on the performance of higher education. This quantitative research was conducted by distributing questionnaires to 234 faculty members of four higher education institutions in Malang City, Indonesia. Partial Least Squares – Structural Equation Modeling was applied to analyze the data. This study finds that digital leadership significantly affects the higher education performance and conclusively predicts digital innovation. As hypothesized, digital literacy has a significant effect on the higher education performance and digital innovation, and digital innovation plays a substantial role in the higher education performance. In addition, digital innovation mediates the influence of digital leadership and digital literacy on the higher education performance.