Understanding Distributed Leadership and Insights for Chinese Educational Institutions in the Context of Digital Transformation: A Literature Review

When education across all levels, is no exception for meeting the needs of industry 4.0 and the new demand of the digital economy and society, distributed leadership is an effective reform strategy for organization's transition to digital transformation. 174 articles related to distributed leadership were selected from eight core-international journals in the field of educational leadership and management with an average h-index of 45, and 64 articles with the keywords of distributed leadership published in the CSSCI and core journals were found. The 248 articles in total were reviewed for analysis with three aspects (research themes and theories; research methodology and analytical methods; discovery and revelation) which were synthesized from the systematic conceptual framework of literature review by Hallinger (2013,2014), the research conclusion frameworks by Bennett et al. (2003) and Tian et al. (2016). The literature review was conducted on four aspects (who, why, what and how) for knowing which most scholars are concerned and for informing educational institutions with insights on distributed leadership for future development.