The impact of digital leadership and job satisfaction of Indonesian generation Z’ job performance in the work place

Abstract

Purpose: To find what the variables impacted to Generation Z working performance especially in the digital era. The respondents focused on the creative workers whom work as online authors in paid writing platforms in Indonesia. To gain understanding deeper why the cerative online workers like to have online writing jobs rather than working in conventional publishers which have 9-5 offline office hours.

Design/methodology/approach: Quantitative approach with SEM AMOS Analysis and spreading 44  questionnaires as the tools to analyze 389 valid respondents. There are 2 independent variables, such as Digital Leadership and Transformational Leadership and there is one independent varibale which is Job Performance mediated by Job Satisfaction.

Findings: All indicators have values ≥ 0.50, means all can be the valid measurement. From 10 GoF, only one has Bad Fit remarks. Seven hypothesis are shown valid, means the indicators used in the questionnaires are valid for this research. There are two independent variables, one dependent variable and one mediating variable with total 8 dimensions for 44 questionnaires. 89% rare female respondents in 21-25 years old, considered themselves as the entrepreneurs in creative areas, and work seriously in writing online fiction novels from around 20 writing and reading paid online reading and writing platforms. They have strong digital literacy and work independently from home with minimum supervisions.

Research limitations/implications: Generation Z in this research are only for those who work as freelance authors in online platforms. Other creative industries such content creators, visual designers and more related to IT, could be suggested for further research.

Practical implications: From the 8 dimensions/indicators used, the highest scale was in the Digital Leadership, in the areas of Managers’ technical abilities. It means Generation Z show more respects for managers who show capabilities in technical skills and have widers knowledge than themselves and also have capabilities to lead and manage team remotely. The lowest scale was in the Digital Transformation itself, which means even though Generation Z have high digital literacy, but they still tend to have company whom provide them with complete devices. Currently most of them used their personal devices.

Social Implications: Working in creative industries especially in digital based can be one of the best solutions to open job vacancies for population boom in productive ages. No need to  have huge investment to build office building, but more on digital and technology investment to build platforms which can be used both leisures and earning money from them.

Originality/value: Previous research mostly in Generation Z job satisfaction in their job performance. But this research adding digital transformation and digital leadership as  the novelty of this research.