Transformational Leadership in Digital Era: Analysis of Nadiem Makarim (Founder of GO-JEK Indonesia) Leadership Figure

Technology and internet have driven innovation and new opportunities by digitizing customers, companies, products, services, and processes. In the digital era, the company has potential to touch all aspects of the business, including customers, employees, partners, business processes, and also a global network of businesses and things from every industry around the world. These conditions bring fundamental changes to community behaviours and its potential consequences. When the organizations adapt themselves to the changes, they require transformational leadership. The objective of this paper is to describe the concept of transformational leadership as a hallmark of a future digital business leader. From the evidence in the literature, in many successful organizations, transformational leaders have contributed to increasing the effectiveness and performance of the organizations. By using the descriptive method with a phenomenological approach, the practice of transformational leadership of Nadiem Makarim as the founder of GO-JEK Indonesia (an Indonesian-owned and run technology start-up that specializes in ride-hailing, logistics, and digital payments) is examined. Then, this paper as a preliminary study provides a review of how Makarim’s leadership philosophy and practice has brought GO-JEK into success, Indonesia’s biggest start-up.