Digital Leadership Competencies, HR Technology Adoption, and Organizational Agility: A Configurational Analysis Using Fuzzy Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis

Abstract

This study examines the configurational conditions under which digital leadership competencies and HR technology adoption jointly produce high organizational agility in Indonesian corporations. Unlike variable-centered approaches that treat antecedents as independent additive predictors, this study employs fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to identify the necessary and sufficient combinations (configurations) of conditions that lead to high and low organizational agility. A cross-sectional survey was administered to HR directors and senior managers in 218 Indonesian firms (manufacturing, financial services, and technology sectors). Five causal conditions were calibrated: Digital Vision (DV), Digital Competency of Leaders (DC), HR Tech Breadth (HTB), HR Tech Integration (HTI), and Organizational Learning Readiness (LR). Outcome: Organizational Agility (OA) operationalized through sensing, seizing, reconfiguring, and responding dimensions. fsQCA was conducted in the R package QCA (Dusa, 2019) with a consistency threshold of 0.85 and a frequency cutoff of 2. Three sufficient configurations produce high organizational agility. Configuration 1 (DV*DC*HTB: coverage = 0.41, consistency = 0.91) represents a ‘digital vision-driven’ path where visionary leaders with technical competency deploy broad HR technology portfolios. Configuration 2 (DC*HTI*LR: coverage = 0.33, consistency = 0.88) describes a ‘competency-integration’ path where deep leader knowledge, integrated HR systems, and organizational learning capacity combine. Configuration 3 (DV*HTB*HTI*LR: coverage = 0.28, consistency = 0.86) reveals a ‘technology-infrastructure’ path. No single condition is necessary for high agility, but digital vision and HR tech integration each appear in two of three configurations. The negation analysis identifies ~DV*~HTI as a consistent path to LOW agility (consistency = 0.87).