Academic librarians assume new roles in the digital era or information age, such as digital curators and educators. Simultaneously, the library is a digital hub and partner in knowledge creation in the contemporary world (Thiruppathi 2024). The digital era, also labelled as the new information age, is characterised by the abundance of information and information overload, the relentless advancement of technology and the changing nature of expectations of product customers and service users (Vinuta 2020). In the academic library, users now expect instant access to information, personalised services, seamless digital experiences, 24/7 online access to resources and expert assistance through virtual services. The diversity of services by some modern libraries also includes lending out technology (e.g. video cameras, iPads and calculators) and enabling access to electronic resources at any time and from anywhere (Ashikuzzaman 2023). Vinuta (2020:728) surmises digital change by highlighting that ‘[librarians] have transitioned from gatekeepers of physical collections to facilitators of digital access and information literacy’. In the digital era, libraries face an identity crisis from integrating technology into library information services (LIS) and the library’s transition onto the web. Thiruppathi (2024) knows that librarians are under pressure to become technology experts while libraries democratise access to resources and promote digital literacy and citizenship in the online community (Ashikuzzaman 2023). There is also a new role in offering user-focused smart services such as help with reference and research. These new roles demand that librarians get new and relevant competencies for the digital and changing world (e.g. new research data management skills suited to digital scholarship) (Badenhorst & Raju 2023). Yee (2012) was able to foresee that libraries would face the problem of not having a pool of skilled staff ready to assume emerging new roles and leadership responsibilities in the digital environment. Table 1 depicts the variety of changes in the role of libraries and librarians, which are salient in reshaping the competencies of library workers at various levels in the digital age.

Library leaders are also championing digital ethics, bridging the digital divide and pursuing user-centricity (Thiruppathi 2024). Libraries have the potential to benefit from credentialing. In a nutshell, credentialing is about helping people gain skills through low-cost, short and less time-intensive options. Libraries can award badges or certificates for discrete sets of knowledge they provide exemplified by information literacy and digital media competency (ACRL Research Planning and Review Committee 2016).

There are three enthralling gaps in extant research on library leadership competence and strategic leadership relevant to the digital era. Firstly, Wong (2017) asserts that extant research on leadership competencies in the academic library needs to pay more attention to the level and scope of leadership. There is a research stream on academic library leadership, which has focused on skills without distinguishing requirements for tactical, supervisory and strategic levels of leadership (Ashiq, Rehman & Batool 2019). For example, an old but insightful study on essential leadership qualities required for the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) by Hernon, Powell and Young (2002) revealed four critical clusters of (1) managerial qualities, (2) planning skills, (3) personal characteristics and (4) general areas of knowledge (e.g. scholarly communication and knowledge of financial management). A recent study by Ashiq et al. (2021) revealed that academic library leaders need to be visionary and innovative with effective communication (e.g. higher authorities, library users and the staff) and social skills to encourage a collaborative and agile culture in academic institutions.

Secondly, there is a scholarly gap and a need for research on the competence of academic library leaders to move away from a one-size-fits-all tendency. This move is fruitful for research to fathom more nuanced and contextualised competencies of academic library leadership, which vary according to tactical, supervisory and strategic levels of leadership. Leadership becomes more complex as one goes into higher organisational levels (Kanyangale 2017).

Thirdly, existing research on strategic leadership, turbulence and crisis is highly fragmented and has evolved differently to propel the generation of theory and valuable insights for practitioners such as library leaders in digital and turbulent times (Schaedler, Graf-Vlachy & Konig 2022). This article helps fill the gap by addressing the under-researched area of competencies of strategic leadership considered as key to lead an academic library during a digital era.

Although leadership in libraries is not a recent phenomenon, limited research is available on the competencies of strategic leaders of the academic library, especially in the digital era in South Africa. Extant studies have focused on the competencies of academic library leadership in general (Ashiq et al. 2023), challenges faced by academic library leaders (Aslam 2020; Le 2015), new roles in the digital era and the role of the public libraries in digital inclusion (Adedokun & Zulu 2022). Research has focused more on the competencies of academic library leadership in general but skirted the competencies of the leaders in the upper echelon or top management team (TMT) of these libraries in the digital era (Wong 2017). In short, competencies of strategic leadership in the academic library in the digital era remain understudied in South Africa. In addition to this gap, scholars such as Ashiq et al. (2023) have called for scholars of leadership in the library to focus on emerging digital and virtual leadership. The objective of this qualitative study is to explore the competencies considered by strategic leaders of an academic library as key to leading effectively in the digital era in South Africa. In pursuit of this research objective, the key research question is: What strategic leadership competencies are required for leading the academic library effectively in the digital era?

There are two distinct ways in which this study is valuable. Firstly, leadership development practitioners may find the identified nature and variety of strategic leadership competencies insightful for designing relevant training at the intersection of strategic leadership, academic library context and emerging digital and virtual leadership vital to leading in the digital era effectively. Secondly, this study has proposed a competence framework for the strategic leadership of academic libraries, which strategic leaders can use to self-assess their existing competencies and identify the need for further development to excel in the digital era. The article discusses the upper echelon theory, competencies and functions of strategic leaders. Subsequently, the article focuses on research methodology, results and findings before the conclusion.

As this study focuses on competencies of strategic leadership, a clear understanding of the upper echelon theory, a robust understanding of competence as a concept and what strategic leaders do is cardinal to form a solid conceptual foundation.

This section describes how strategic leaders of the academic library in a selected university in South Africa were chosen and how data were collected and analysed.

Academic library strategic leaders considered eight competencies as key to the effective strategic leadership of an academic library in the digital era. Each of these competencies is presented in detail below:

This study explored the competencies of academic library strategic leadership to lead in the digital era in South Africa effectively. The findings reveal eight competencies of strategic leadership of an academic library in the digital era. Sensing and clarifying the strategic direction of an academic library are one of these key competencies for strategic leaders to be effective. Relentless focus on long-term orientation, an effort to gain operational efficiency and sensing the profound tensions between humans and machines such as robots are essential for the strategic direction of the academic library. Hart and Quinn (1993) see a strategic leader as a vision setter, while Covey (1996) thinks strategic leaders are pathfinders.

Nonetheless, this study asserts that strategic leaders in the academic library are less effective when they overlook the need to espouse an inspiring digital dimension of the vision of the academic library. Often, academic libraries are so focused on aligning with the university vision that they ignore clarifying their specific and inspiring digital vision (Harland, Stewart & Bruce 2021). Nicholson (2015) agrees that academic libraries are short sighted and need strategic thinking and fiscal agility. In a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous context (VUCA) and digital era, sensing and clarifying strategic direction is challenging as one has to scan and understand the rapidly changing environment to avoid issues such as the uncritical adoption of technology. Strategic leaders must be well informed on the dark side of substituting people with machines in the library, especially in a country already facing significant unemployment.

Strategic thinking by strategic leaders of the academic library as a key competence constitutes elements such as future-oriented thinking, creative thinking and solutions and timely thinking about interdependencies of various aspects of an academic library. However, a robust rule-based culture constrains creative and divergent dimensions of strategic thinking necessary to rewrite the rules of the game and envision potential futures. The old but still insightful five-dimensional model of strategic thinking by Liedtka (1998) pronounces the necessity of systems perspective, intent-focused thinking and thinking in time, which connects the past, present and future to focus on what needs to be done to get the desired future. The model also applauds hypothesis-driven thinking as key to seeing and formulating future possibilities and plans. Intelligent opportunism, as part of strategic thinking, helps to re-examine and balance strategic intent with the flexibility to adapt strategy to emerging opportunities and changing situations.

Nicholson (2015) laments that the pursuit of transformation in academic libraries suffers because most librarians are ‘boxed in’ to predominantly think within regulations and strict guidelines rather than ‘think outside the box’ as the university academic library is interconnected not only to the university community but also local and global society in a digital era. The digital vision of the academic library is a strategic tool if individuals within the library are to marshal and leverage their strategic thinking capabilities, focus attention, resist distraction and concentrate for as long as it takes to achieve the strategic digital goal. More importantly, effective strategic thinking by strategic leaders in a VUCA is crucial to isolate and focus on a few critical and game-changing issues with the most significant impact on the academic library.

Notably, collective and shared excellence was also identified as key for the strategic leadership of an academic library. This finding resonates with the view that strategic leadership is about the individual leader, the relational, collective identity and performance (Kjellstrom, Stalne & Tornblom 2020). When there is mutual influence, team members collectively wield leadership influence, take on tasks typically reserved for a single leader and, when appropriate, offer guidance to fellow members to advance group objectives (Wu, Cormican & Chen 2020). A study conducted by Aslam (2019) in the United States (US) involving library directors, managers and senior librarians found that a shared vision is integral to collective library leadership, fostering readiness and empowerment for organisational change. Strategic leaders should not overlook the power of internal and external capital to build collective capacity through bonding social capital (e.g. solid connections and trust among homogeneous or similar people such as staff within library departments) and bridging social capital (e.g. benefits arising from connections, networks and trust between heterogeneous people such as staff in the library with schools, students, faculty and IT departments outside the library and University) (Claridge 2018). A study of the academic library at Mzuzu University (Mzuni) by Kanyangale and Njoloma (2020) confirmed that social capital at the individual and organisational levels is crucial in building resilience within the library, the university and beyond for the library. However, it is unclear in the current study how strategic leaders in the academic library link up vertically with influential people in the hierarchy inside and outside the university as part of linking social capital.

The current study also found that leveraging tech-savvy for productivity (e.g. introducing and institutionalising public-facing digital technologies and technologies for efficiency of internal tasks, processes and staff) is critical for strategic leaders to lead an academic library. Research on the practice of McDonaldization of the library has focused on four dimensions, namely efficiency (e.g. the systematic removal of unnecessary time or effort in pursuit of an objective), calculability (the tendency to measure quality in terms of quantity), predictability (assurance that products and services are expected to be the same over time and avoiding giving surprises to customer) and control (replace humans with technology as it is easy to manage) in the academic library (Nicholson 2015). McDonaldization of the academic library reinforces standards and maximises resource efficiencies while also raising library users’ expectations (e.g. fast service and less waiting in line for reference assistance) (Cho 2015).

Another notable finding is that leadership agility is critical for strategic leaders but may need to be more holistic. Overlooking creative and self-leadership agility weakens the overall agility of strategic leaders. Joiner (2019) developed a holistic leadership agility campus that integrates four agility types: context-setting, stakeholder, creative and self-leadership agility. Firstly, context-setting agility is the ability to scan the environment, discern opportunities and threats and set the strategic direction accordingly.

Strategic leaders in this study were effective in scanning the environment, framing initiatives (e.g. self-checking, RFID) to be taken and clarifying the outcomes that needed to be achieved. Secondly, strategic leaders were also effective in engaging internal stakeholders to address differences and gain alignment and buy-in, which is part of stakeholder agility. However, the stakeholder agility of strategic leaders was predominantly inward, overlooking the external, ad hoc and strategic approach to partnerships. In this way, the agility of strategic leaders was not holistic because of weak creative and self-leadership agility. Joiner and Josephs (2006) assert that creative agility is about solving problems and innovation by thinking outside the box and being resourceful to overcome obstacles. Self-leadership agility brings to the fore the significance of leading with self-awareness, using experience and feedback to accelerate learning and adapting to a leadership approach. In this study, strategic leaders were silent on whether and how they ensured accurate self-awareness but also accelerated their learning. Kanyangale and Pearse (2014) confirmed the weakness of self-awareness among junior leaders in South Africa who needed help identifying and specifying the leadership competencies they had developed during a leadership programme and dynamic pathways of how their competencies evolved and developed over time. Strategic leaders in the academic library need to improve the creative and self-leadership dimensions of their agility (Nguyen et al. 2024).

As strategic leaders of an academic library focused predominantly on achieving strategic outcomes through stakeholder engagement and collaboration during the digital era, it is arguable that they were achiever leaders, according to the vocabulary of Joiner (2019). An achiever leader is distinct from an expert leader, who is a tactical problem solver with little stakeholder engagement (Joiner 2019). However, the most desirable level of agility and style of leadership when both the pace of change and complexity are high is called catalyst leadership (Joiner & Josephs 2006). A catalyst leader goes beyond achieving strategic outcomes to build individual and organisational capacity to meet any challenge in the most complex context with the high pace of change (Joiner & Josephs 2006).

Notably, this study also found that developing others and programmes to navigate digital change is critical for strategic leaders in the digital era. However, strategic leaders in the current study could not craft and communicate an inspiring digital vision for the library. A study by Harris (2019) illuminated that library directors are significantly weak in strategic planning and budget management. These deficiencies illuminate the need for strategic thinking competence to enable strategic leaders to analyse strategic positions, create and evaluate strategic choices and put strategy into action in the academic library. The complaint by Harris (2019) that library directors perceive essential leadership skills development to happen at the director level rather than at other positions in librarianship is enough to call for timely and holistic leadership development of potential strategic leaders in the academic library.

Lastly, the study found that strategic e-leadership, typified by the social influence process mediated by technology, is a new and critical competence in the academic library. For members of Top Management Team (TMT) to excel, they need strategic e-leadership, which is more than using and blending ICT with traditional methods to affect team members’ output directly. Strategic e-leaders must be effective in ensuring that public-facing tech and in-ward-facing tech contribute to the building of inclusive community and interpersonal trust if employees are to deliver results and engage fully irrespective of their location.

The current study has identified eight different competencies of strategic leadership key to effectively lead a South African academic library during VUCA and the digital era. Additionally, there are six identifiable tasks and roles associated with these eight competencies. For example, individual-centric competencies of strategic thinking, sensing and clarifying strategic direction are related to leading change to adapt to the digital era. Academic library strategic leaders need to assume the role of vision setter and change leader in the academic library. The relational-oriented competence of shared and collective excellence demands the building of social capital and the pursuit of the connector role by the strategic leader and the library. Other collective and relational-oriented competencies, such as developing people and reinforcing strategic alignment, entail the key tasks of leading change, fostering innovation and creating an innovative culture. Leveraging technological proficiency is crucial not only in the tasks of leading change but also in leading teams, integrating individual and organisational-level efforts for efficiencies and resilience through digital technology. The competence of strategic e-leadership of teams is crucial for building community, social capital and social influence through the blending of traditional and digital tools across a range of contexts. Lastly, the competence of leadership agility is pivotal for rapidly introducing and institutionalising technology for productivity and efficiency and engaging stakeholders to get buy-in. The identified eight competencies and their related tasks and roles are presented in Figure 1, showing the proposed competence framework for academic library strategic leadership in the digital era.

The study has three implications for strategic leadership development, self-assessment of strategic leadership competencies and a steady supply of strategic leaders to lead academic libraries in the digital era.

This study is a valuable contribution to research on the competencies of strategic leadership situated at the intersection of the upper echelon theory, academic library leadership and the digital era in South Africa. This study has identified eight key competencies for a strategic leader to effectively lead an academic library in the digital era. The multidimensional and multilevel nature of the competences of strategic leadership is illuminated for leadership development practitioners to comprehensively and holistically develop lower-level leaders into strategic leadership in the academic library. Regular self-assessment of strategic leadership by those in the upper echelon, identification of deficiencies by line managers and prioritisation of competence development by leadership development practitioners are critical and possible using the proposed framework. Those aspiring towards strategic leadership positions in the academic library now have an instructive framework of competencies to use when considering and prioritising their development and learning pathways. The proposed framework is a developmental tool that can assist in increasing the supply of agile and catalyst strategic leaders of academic libraries in the digital era. The major limitation is using one academic library and a small sample, such that the results are not generalisable but transferable to a similar context. Future research needs to use a diverse and large sample to enrich the framework and validate the identified competencies of strategic leadership of an academic library in the digital era.