Leading in the Digital Age: Investigating the Impact of Project Managers’ Digital Leadership on Construction Project Performance

Abstract

In the digital era, reshaping project leadership has become a strategic imperative for enhancing project performance. While digital leadership is gaining academic attention as an emerging paradigm within construction management, its impact on project outcomes and the underlying mechanisms remain empirically underexplored. Drawing on dynamic capability theory, this study aims to explore how the digital leadership of project managers relates to construction project performance. We propose a moderated mediation framework that considers team digital capabilities as a critical mediator and team identification as an important contingency of the mediation effect. Data were collected via structured questionnaires distributed to industry practitioners with direct experience in digital construction projects. Using structural equation modeling, we empirically tested our hypotheses based on responses from 343 seasoned project professionals. This study revealed a specific pathway wherein project managers’ digital leadership exhibited a positive link with project performance via the mediating role of team digital capabilities. Furthermore, team identification positively moderated both the direct relationship between digital leadership and team digital capabilities, and the indirect relationship between digital leadership and project performance through team digital capabilities. This study provides novel empirical evidence on the effectiveness of project managers’ digital leadership and how it translates into performance gains in construction projects, thereby enriching leadership and project performance research in the field of construction management within the context of digital transformation. It also offers project managers and team members a clear, practical path to promote construction project performance by actively cultivating team identification and systematically developing team digital capabilities.