Digitally transformed academic work and wellbeing: developing the Digital Academic Work Reconfiguration and Wellbeing Framework
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Digital transformation is reshaping academic work through remote and hybrid arrangements, intensified digital connectivity and the expanding use of artificial intelligence (AI). These developments can support flexibility, autonomy and efficiency, but may also intensify workload, erode work–life boundaries and generate demands associated with continuous adaptation, academic integrity and professional responsibility. Existing evidence is fragmented across technostress, remote and hybrid work, digital readiness and AI-enabled academic work, leaving insufficiently explained how technological change becomes embedded in the organisation and experience of academic work and, through this process, relates to wellbeing. This conceptual paper addresses this gap by developing the Digital Academic Work Reconfiguration and Wellbeing (DAWR-W) Framework. The framework was developed through theory synthesis informed by a structured literature foundation of 40 empirical studies and complementary theoretical research. The synthesis distinguishes the characteristics through which digital transformation reconfigures the organisation, boundaries, demands, relationships and professional content of academic work from the psychosocial mechanisms through which academics experience these changes. The resulting framework identifies seven characteristics of digitally transformed academic work and six psychosocial mechanisms involving resource depletion and replenishment, recovery and psychological detachment, perceived control and autonomy, competence and adaptive capacity, relational connection and psychological safety, and professional meaning and identity. Organisational and institutional conditions shape how digital transformation becomes embedded in academic work, while boundary conditions and feedback processes recognise contextual variation and adaptation over time. The central contribution of the DAWR-W Framework is to position work reconfiguration, rather than technology exposure alone, as the occupational process connecting digital transformation with academic employee wellbeing. In doing so, the framework integrates previously fragmented digital-work phenomena within a common explanatory architecture and locates responsibility for sustainable digital academic work across both individual and institutional levels. It provides an occupation-specific foundation for empirical testing, work-design interventions, and digital and AI governance in higher education.
Source: Frontiers in Sociology
Institution: University of South Africa
Language: English
Subfield: Social Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $1,418
OpenAlex ID: W7225649912