Dynamic Leadership Competencies for Enabling Construction 4.0: A Case of China
type: CreativeWork
description: The concept of Construction 4.0 signals a transformation from the digitalisation of isolated tasks towards the reconfiguration of processes, business models, and professionals’ interactions. Yet, digital transformation in the construction industry remains slow and uneven, with leadership increasingly recognised as a critical enabler. Existing studies have largely focused on leadership roles and styles, offering limited insights into the concrete competencies required to support digital transformation. This research addresses the gap by identifying and validating the leadership competencies for Construction 4.0, and by examining how the importance and performance vary across organisational management levels and digital maturity contexts. The study focuses on China’s construction industry, which offers a valuable context due to its scale, complexity, and uneven transformation progress. A mixed-methods design was adopted, integrating a systematic literature review, semi-structured interviews with senior construction managers, and a large-scale survey. The research first synthesised existing knowledge on leadership and digital transformation to develop a preliminary framework of 22 leadership competencies grouped into four domains: Cognitive, Interpersonal, Business and Strategic. This framework was then refined to be 25 leadership competencies through semi-structured interviews with 13 senior managers, who also revealed organisational barriers shaping the implementation of digital transformation in practice. Building on these qualitative insights, a questionnaire was developed to assess three components: digital maturity, the importance of competencies, and the performance of competencies. These data enabled the identification of critical competencies and performance gaps among the management levels and variations associated with digital maturity. Quantitative analysis revealed that while most of the 25 competencies were regarded as important, significant gaps exist be…
abstract: The concept of Construction 4.0 signals a transformation from the digitalisation of isolated tasks towards the reconfiguration of processes, business models, and professionals’ interactions. Yet, digital transformation in the construction industry remains slow and uneven, with leadership increasingly recognised as a critical enabler. Existing studies have largely focused on leadership roles and styles, offering limited insights into the concrete competencies required to support digital transformation. This research addresses the gap by identifying and validating the leadership competencies for Construction 4.0, and by examining how the importance and performance vary across organisational management levels and digital maturity contexts. The study focuses on China’s construction industry, which offers a valuable context due to its scale, complexity, and uneven transformation progress. A mixed-methods design was adopted, integrating a systematic literature review, semi-structured interviews with senior construction managers, and a large-scale survey. The research first synthesised existing knowledge on leadership and digital transformation to develop a preliminary framework of 22 leadership competencies grouped into four domains: Cognitive, Interpersonal, Business and Strategic. This framework was then refined to be 25 leadership competencies through semi-structured interviews with 13 senior managers, who also revealed organisational barriers shaping the implementation of digital transformation in practice. Building on these qualitative insights, a questionnaire was developed to assess three components: digital maturity, the importance of competencies, and the performance of competencies. These data enabled the identification of critical competencies and performance gaps among the management levels and variations associated with digital maturity. Quantitative analysis revealed that while most of the 25 competencies were regarded as important, significant gaps exist be…
author: Yang, Kevin ; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0451-6544
language: en
license: https://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_abf2
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
date published: 2026
date modified: 2026-07-24T05:32:40Z
provider: University of New South Wales
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: UNSW, Sydney

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.4/107456

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.26190/unsworks/32178