Understanding Digital Work and its Use in Organizations from a Literature Review

Abstract

Background: Digital work is becoming increasingly popular due to its benefits and the continuous surge of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite numerous studies in attempting at understanding the adoption of digital work and its impact from various perspectives, there is lack of a systematic review of such studies. As a result, a systematic review of this nature is becoming critical as such a review can summarize what has been done and provide a solid foundation for future research. Method: A comprehensive review of existing studies of digital work and its use in organizations is conducted in a systematic manner. This leads to the identification of 87 papers published between 2010 and 2020 in major journals from the mostly popular databases including ProQuest, Emerald, ScienceDirect and Web of Science. Such papers then have been critically analyzed and synthesized. Results: The review of the related literature leads to the formulation of a working definition for digital work, the identification of the characteristics of digital work, and the emerging issues that influence the adoption of digital work in organizations. An integrated framework is proposed for better understanding the adoption of digital work from the perspectives of individuals, organizations, and society. Conclusion: This study proposes an integrated framework for better understanding the adoption of digital work in organizations. Such a framework can be tested and validated in various contexts. The study contributes to existing research from both theoretical and practical perspectives. Theoretically, this study identifies the characteristics of digital work and the emerging issues for affecting the adoption of digital work through reviewing the related literature in a holistic manner. Practically, this study provides organizations with useful information on how to address the emerging issues in the adoption of digital work.