Leadership and the fourth industrial revolution: A systematic literature review.

This paper examines research in the area of leadership and the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) by scoping literature through a systematic approach. The purpose of this study is to identify trends and gaps relating to issues addressed, theoretical and conceptual approaches, methodologies, geographical representation of research, and future research directions in the area. In all, 45 articles were sampled through a predetermined selection criteria and analysed using descriptive statistics. The results indicate that four major issues investigated in multiple sectors dominate the area. Besides, a number of theories were found to have been used in understanding the topic, while in terms of methodology, there appears to be a fair distribution of papers using qualitative and quantitative approaches but an imbalance between cross‐sectional and longitudinal designs. Again, most of the studies were conducted at the meso and micro levels and were produced in Asia, Europe, Africa, North America, Australia, and South America in that ranking order. Overall, it was realised that because of the emerging nature of the 4IR phenomenon, research work in the area is now rising, requiring further research output to address the gaps identified through this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]