DIGITAL LEADERSHIP OF OUTSOURCING IT COMPANIES AMID THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE GLOBAL MARKET OF TECHNOLOGY SERVICES

Abstract

The article examines the essence of digital leadership in outsourcing IT companies amid the structural transformation of the global technology services market. It is substantiated that the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence, cloud technologies, digital platforms, and agentic systems is reshaping the traditional determinants of IT companies' competitiveness, shifting the emphasis from the cost of human resources towards management's capacity to integrate digital technologies into business processes and to ensure their economic effectiveness. Contemporary scholarly approaches to interpreting digital leadership are analyzed, the findings of Ukrainian and foreign researchers are synthesized, and the place of digital leadership within the system of enterprise digital transformation is defined. The article explores the development trends of the global IT services market. It analyses the practices of leading international outsourcing companies regarding the adoption of artificial intelligence, the development of proprietary digital platforms, the enhancement of employees' digital competencies, and the use of AI agents in corporate governance. It is established that digital leadership is acquiring the features of a measurable economic category, since its effectiveness is assessed through the volume of orders and revenues generated by digital solutions, the productivity of managerial processes, the reduction of operating costs, and the speed of managerial decision-making. Particular attention is devoted to the current state of digital leadership among Ukrainian outsourcing IT companies. It is revealed that despite renewed positive dynamics in computer services exports and the active use of artificial intelligence tools by IT professionals, a substantial gap persists between the individual application of digital technologies and their systemic integration into corporate governance. It is argued that bridging this gap requires cultivating digital leadership as a comprehensive managerial competence to redesign business processes, deploy agentic technologies, develop employees' digital competencies, and safeguard human control over critical managerial decisions. It is concluded that digital leadership is one of the key factors ensuring the long-term competitiveness of outsourcing IT companies amid the transformation of the global technology services market.