strategic digital leadership in construction: overcoming organizational barriers to sustainable competitiveness

Despite technological advancements (e.g., bim, ai, iot), the construction industry exhibits low digital maturity, hindered by persistent managerial challenges, including cultural resistance, rigid hierarchies, and institutional inertia. this study investigates strategic digital leadership (cdile) as a catalyst for overcoming these barriers and enabling sustainable competitiveness. employing a systematic review of 60 peer-reviewed articles (2015-2023) from scopus, web of science, and proquest, thematic coding synthesized evidence across theoretical and regional contexts. findings reveal that cdile characterized by participatory leadership, strategic visioning, digital literacy, and resource alignment, facilitates agile, data-driven, and sustainable decision-making. organizations implementing cdile principles demonstrate significant gains, including project efficiency improvements (up to 30%) and reduced delays (by 25%). the study presents an empirically grounded framework for leadership-driven digital transformation, focusing on practical organizational change interventions, particularly in emerging markets. it advances scholarship by reframing digital transformation as fundamentally leadership-led, not merely technology-driven, and offers actionable pathways for firms and policymakers to embed digital strategy into construction management, guiding future empirical validation.