Background: The leadership styles, e-leadership skills and digital marketing innovation

There are a lot studies published about leadership styles (transformational, transactional, avoidant/passive) and gender (^{Eagly & Blair, 1990}; ^{Johnsson & Powell, 1994}; ^{Burke & Collins, 2001}; ^{Ali et al., 2014}; ^{Patel & Buiting, 2013}; ^{Gino & Wood. 2015}, ^{Górska, 2016}; ^{Radu et al. 2016}; ^{Sule et al. 2017}) and how is very acknowledged the effectiveness of transformational leadership, for instance to innovate (^{Eagly & Johanssen-Schmidt, 2001}; ^{Wennberg et al., 2013}; ^{Al-Husseini & Elbetagi, 2014}; ^{Tajasom, et al., 2015}; ^{Lee & Pollitzer, 2016}; Alsos et al., 2017; ^{Gipson et al., 2017}; ^{Teymournejad & Elghaei, 2017}; ^{UN, 2017}; ^{Zhang et al., 2018}; ^{Hui et al., 2018}). This has been proved in a number of settings and in many countries around the world with different models measuring the leadership like Multi-Factor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ5X, ^{Bass & Avolio, 2006}), the Leadership dimensions questionnaire: test manual (^{Higgs & Dulewicz, 2015}) or solving conflicts (^{Wen-Long & Chun-Yi, 2013}; ^{Okyere, 2018}). In fact, the transformational leadership style is considered more aligned with the female than the male gender style (^{Eagly & Johanssen-Schmidt, 2001}; ^{Patel & Buiting, 2013}; Mackowski (2015); ^{Stemple et al. 2015}).

The opposite of this, are the scarce works about leadership and gender, associated with information and communication technologies (ICT), that is evolving to a new concept: the e-leadership.

The e-leadership is the “key to using new digital technologies for innovation and transformation, managed in a relevant organizational context and embedded in the business strategy” (^{EUROCOM, 2015}) considered as well as the “accomplishment of a goal through the direction of human resources” (^{EUROCOM, 2012}). It is “the new emerging context for examining leadership… it is defined as a social influence process mediated by advanced information technologies to produce a change in attitudes, feelings, thinking, behavior, and performance with individuals, groups, and/or organizations” (Avolio et al., 2001). The e-leadership is considered in the digital era, for: “managers, entrepreneurs, and business executives must have e-competences to grow, export and be connected to the global digital markets. In a digital economy, e-leadership skills are essential. Effective e-leaders are capable of leading teams and managing technology systems in ways that achieve both local and global demands” (^{EUROCOM, 2012}). To achieve effectiveness in the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) (^{Qureshi, 2013}; ^{Del Valle, 2014}) and in the e-leadership (^{EUROCOM, 2015}) is necessary to develop three important skills, such as: strategic leadership, business savvy and digital savvy based on the e-leadership digital skills for the small and media sized enterprises (SMES) for the chief executive office (CEO) (ELDSME by ^{EUROCOM, 2015}) to apply, in our case to the digital marketing sector.

In a literature review for e-leadership made it by ^{DasGupta (2011}), he studied around seventy-seven journal articles and the term gender, only appeared in the works of: ^{Bryant (et al., 2009}) and ^{D‘Souza and Colarelli (2010}). So, the importance to determine the leadership style, the e-leadership skills and how are both manifested, according to the manager’s gender.

According ^{OECD (2005}) innovation is: “the implementation of a new or significantly improved product (good or service), or process, a new marketing method, or a new organizational method in business practices, workplace organization or external relations”. Regarding the marketing innovation: “is the implementation of a new marketing method involving significant changes in product design or packaging, product placement, product promotion or pricing”. As you see, digital marketing is itself, an innovation with several and innovative tools, for instance: planning and building a website, planning the content, blogging, paying the advertisement, the social networking, emailing, making video, making the web analytics, etc. considered in the digital marketing innovation model (DMIM) by ^{Mejía-Trejo (2017}).

All mentioned above, representing a great opportunity to be explored and offer a field of study of how the relationships among: leadership style, e-leadership skills and the digital marketing innovation are dependent to the manager’s gender for improving their SMEs digital marketing sector.

Background: The context of the SMEs

In the sense of those e-leadership skills in the real world of the marketing sector necessities and as an opportunity to apply all the concepts mentioned above, we can say that the SMEs play an important role within the emergent economies just like Mexico (^{EUROCOM, 2015}). For instance, according ^{INADEM (2016}), in Jalisco (a state of México), the size occupied personnel of the SMEs representing the 24.6% (see table 1) and they have the 2.4% as economic unit participation.

The 8 786/366 107 SMEs as economic units in Jalisco, Mexico are distributed in 20 activity areas (^{IIEGJ, 2017}), and they require the implementation of digital marketing innovation activities through the leadership skills (^{EUROCOM, 2012}). In this sense, the web portal ^{Millones de Voces (2017}), reports a sector of digital marketing agencies with more than 200/8 786 SMEs firms located at Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. All of them have been working under e-infrastructure, saving costs of operations and all of them require to be aligned with the goals posed by their CEOs.

Objective: the research question

So far, one remarkable note is that, most of the studies are generalized with the gender issue. Thus, we proposed the following research question: Regarding the leadership style and e-leadership skills on digital marketing innovation for SMEs, how are their relationships dependent by the manager’s gender?

To solve the research question, this work proposes to use three known previously published models, such as: the multi-factor leadership questionnaire (MLQ5X by ^{Bass & Avolio, 2006}) the e-leadership digital skills for the SMEs (ELDSME, ^{EUROCOM, 2015}) and the digital marketing innovation Model (DMIM by ^{Mejía-Trejo, 2017}).

This research is divided into the explanation of: rationale of the study; methodology; the literature review; results; discussion; limitations; conclusion and future studies.

MLQ5X. Multifactor-Leadership. Questionnaire Model (^{Bass & Avolio, 2006})

Leadership, According to DRALE (2017), means: 1. m. lead. 2. m. Status of superiority which is a company, a product or an industry, within its scope. Today, we have recognized the advantage represented transformational leadership in innovation processes, due to the work of Avolio & Bass (2004). ^{Sample’s report (2007}), for example, has the following profile of transformational leader: “creating greater alignment around strategic visions and missions, their behavioral factors are associated with increased sales, transformational leadership explains between 45% and 60% levels of organizational performance; create greater unit cohesion, commitment and lower turnover, predicted higher levels of innovation in teams of R&D products, transformational leaders create safer working environments” and the female managers are found to exhibit a transformational leadership style, whereby, entails characteristics such as inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration and is suggested to benefit the innovation (^{Ritter-Hayashi et al., 2016}).

Hence, we suggested to identify according the manager gender, the level of transformational and transactional leadership qualities of the leaders of the SME organization using the tool known as the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ5X).

This questionnaire has 4 variables that identifies the style of leadership currently is practicing into the SME by the CEO (Transformational/Transactional/Passive-Avoidant Behavior and Outcomes of Leadership style) with 12 dimensions and 45 indicators.(See Figure 1, and Appendix)

Hence, we proposed the hypothesis 1: The Leadership Style practiced by the females SME- CEOs digital marketing agencies is more Transformational than Transactional or Passive-Avoidant style.

ELDSME. e-Leadership Digital Skills for the SMEs Model (^{EUROCOM, 2015})

According ^{EUROCOM (2012}): “The demand appears to be significant for e-leaders. Of the approximately 255 000 vacancies for the EU-27 in 2012, we find 76 000 vacancies for ICT management and business architecture skills. Furthermore, the gap is disproportionately affecting small and medium-size enterprise: 70% of vacancies can be found in SMEs which demand ICT skills in much greater numbers than large enterprises”. Furthermore, is considered of crucial importance for companies and industry to reach the excellence in their business operation, being the key in the use of the new digital technologies for innovation and transformation, including the organizational context and deeply embedded in the business strategy. In this sense, the e-Leadership has to be described with several special skills required of an individual to initiate and achieve digital innovation. In other words, e-leadership is: “a key ingredient to foster Europe’s competitiveness and innovation potential” (^{EUROCOM, 2015}). The model is described since the skills represented in the following three variables:

The questionnaire identifies what the e-leadership CEO skills are currently appearing in the SME (see figure 1, and appendix).

Hence, we proposed the hypothesis 2: The e-leadership skills practiced by the females SME-CEOs digital marketing agencies are more of Strategic Leadership Skill than Business Savvy or Digital Savvy type.

DMIM. Digital Marketing Innovation Model (^{Mejía-Trejo, 2017})

According the ^{OECD (2005}) innovation is defined as a: “implementation of a new or significantly improved product (good or service), or process, a new marketing method, or a new organisational method in business practices, workplace organisation or external relations and it involves the innovation of: product, service, marketing, process and organization” and, is not limited to the male gender. Several authors suggest the empowerment of the female innovation, for instance ^{Ritter-Hayashi (et al., 2016}): “We suggest that the level of women’s economic opportunity in the country, within which firms operate, moderates the effect of gender diversity on a firms’ likelihood to innovate”. ^{Akulava (2015}) affirms: “The results suggest that the propensity to innovate is higher among companies with a presence of a female owner… the results show that having a female as the only, or one of the, owner(s) increases the propensity of going into uncertainty and implementation of a new good/service by 4.5% in the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) region and 6.7% in the non- CIS block”. It is a remarkable fact that this finding contradicts the literature on gender differences in the willingness to take on risk that mostly demonstrates that women, on average, are more risk-averse than men (^{IFC, 2014}). Other studies, complement the skills of female managers when they claim: “the women entrepreneurs tended to focus their innovation efforts on business organization rather than on products and processes, more so than their male counterparts. They were also more likely to have cohesive and collaborative management structures… females seemed to be more active than their male counterparts in using ICT tools including the social media networking to market products and services”, furthermore: “fewer women business obtained patents compared with their men business owners” ^{UNCTAD (2013}), despite several external barriers, for female managers, such as: insufficient access to capital, limited access to new markets and ICT s, cultural constraints, lack of capacity-building, access to education. etc.

However, “women scores less than men, when assessing the level of innovation of their own business” (^{EUROCOM, 2008}). Thus, is very important to promote female entrepreneurship and, in particular, seeking to support women innovators/inventors who wish to become entrepreneurs.

Regarding the digital marketing matter, this is itself an innovation, defining it through the DMIM as: “a process to design the strategy and tactics in a planned implementation, selecting a set of digital marketing tools. These should be based on mission-vision, the market segmentation, goal settings and value proposition of the firm, with the performance monitoring and the profitability of the digital campaign design, in a permanent way” (^{Mejía-Trejo, 2017}, Mejía-Trejo et al., 2016. See table 2). In this latest definition, we consider that exist several issues to be disclosed and aligned when the female manager is involved.

Hence, we proposed the hypothesis 3: The DMIM variable most practiced by the females SME-CEOs digital marketing agencies is more of Strategic Planning for business, than Market or Model Performance.

Therefore, the final MLQ5X-ELDSME-DMIM construct ex ante, is showed in Figure 1.

Thus, we answered the SQ1: “Which are the variables and factors involved in the final construct?”

The final questionnaire identifies what elements are considered by the SME-CEOs digital marketing agencies (see figure 1, and appendix).

Thus, we answered the SQ2: “Which is the final questionnaire?”