Defining the digital workplace: A systematic literature review

Abstract

There have been a significant number of publications about digital workplace transformation. This is due to technological developments in the last decades as well as the COVID-19 pandemic. However, there is no adequate overall definition of the term. This leads to misunderstandings and confused interpretation of the digital workplace, sometimes even narrowing it down to a set of tools or a platform. Given the complexity of digital workplace transformation, there is a need to have an integrated prospective and analyze it not just from a technological perspective, but from an organizational and processes point of view as well. Therefore, this paper is an attempt to review the concept and offer a comprehensive definition of the digital workplace. This includes all the important aspects of the transformation including tools and platforms as well as personal issues, organization, processes and management. The paper provides a systematic literature review of the publications in leading bibliographic and citation bases, starting from Web of Science and Scopus to SpringerLink, IEEE Xplore and Association for Information Systems eLibrary. The review includes not only journal papers, but also leading proceedings, books and other referent publications. It addresses the authors' approaches, perspectives, terminologies, focusses and understanding of workplace transformation over the last decade by a comprehensive review of the state of art of the literature in the field of digital workplace. Finally, a set of recommendations are made to further research in increasingly important subject of digital workplace transformation.

Full text

STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT, Vol. xx (20xx), No. x, pp. 0xx-0xx
DOI: 10.5937/StraMan2200010M
Received: October 9, 2021
Accepted: February 2, 2022
Defining the digital workplace: a
systematic literature review
Ljubiša Mićić
University of Banja Luka, Faculty of Economics, Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2879-5760
Homayoun Khamooshi
George Washington University, School of Business, Washington, DC, United States of America
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4507-4540
Lazar Raković
University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Economics in Subotica, Subotica, Serbia
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1465-588X
Predrag Matković
University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Economics in Subotica, Subotica, Serbia
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9956-0088
Abstract
There have been a significant number of publications about digital workplace transformation. This is due to
technological developments in the last decades as well as the COVID-19 pandemic. However, there is no
adequate overall definition of the term. This leads to misunderstandings and confused interpretation of the
digital workplace, sometimes even narrowing it down to a set of tools or a platform.
Given the complexity of digital workplace transformation, there is a need to have an integrated prospective
and analyze it not just from a technological perspective, but from an organizational and processes point of
view as well. Therefore, this paper is an attempt to review the concept and offer a comprehensive definition of
the digital workplace. This includes all the important aspects of the transformation including tools and
platforms as well as personal issues, organization, processes and management.
The paper provides a systematic literature review of the publications in leading bibliographic and citation
bases, starting from Web of Science and Scopus to SpringerLink, IEEE Xplore and Association for Information
Systems eLibrary. The review includes not only journal papers, but also leading proceedings, books and other
referent publications. It addresses the authors’ approaches, perspectives, terminologies, focusses and
understanding of workplace transformation over the last decade by a comprehensive review of the state of art
of the literature in the field of digital workplace. Finally, a set of recommendations are made to further research
in increasingly important subject of digital workplace transformation.
Keywords
digital workplace, digital transformation, change management, systematic literature review
Introduction
Modern workplace requires not only technological
but also organizational and process adaptation to
achieve full functional and operational
transformation from a traditional into a digital
workplace. Social and technological changes have
affected the ways of communication, cooperation
and collaboration. Challenges and opportunities
that those changes bring are discussed between
policy makers, academics, businessmen and others.
There are different viewpoints on how changes
affect the way we do business, but it is
unquestionable that technology has strong impact
on work and organization. According to Coetzee
(2019), in the twenty-first century “organizations
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from the era of Industry 4.0 are rapidly becoming
smart networked jobs as a result of the exponential
revolution brought by technological development”.
Dery, Sebastian and van der Meulen (2017) state
that technological and organizational progress has
significantly improved the communication,
collaboration and coworking in conjunction with
lifestyle changes and trends related to work-life
balance. It enabled the digital transformation of the
workplace. The focus of digital workplace
transformation can be on technological tools or so-
called “enablers” but it should also include
organizational adjustment, changed processes and
psychological factors of employees (Eckhardt,
Endter, Giordano, & Somers, 2018).
Most of contemporary research perceives the
concept of digital workplace and the processes of
its implementation as a multidisciplinary function.
Therefore, it definitely needs to be further defined
and expanded in contrast to the simplified view in
science and practice. Eckhardt et al. (2018) note
that the key factors in changing the modern labor
market and workplace are the following:
 power has shifted from employer to
employee;
 the demographics of Western economies
have changed towards greater participation
of the so-called Millennials in the labor
force.
Among other things, the past couple of decades
are recognizable by the significant development of
information technologies and the changes they
have brought in the field of organization and
performance of work, as well as changes in the
nature of work, which has been significantly
accelerated by digital transformation and digital
workplace design (Williams & Schubert, 2018).
Changes in technology/applications and changes in
the workforce require a workplace that encourages
productivity, collaboration, innovation and agility
which also lowers the cost of information
technology and business operations (Attaran,
Attaran, & Kirkland, 2019). In addition, digital
innovations enable communication and
collaboration that can lead to a change in the nature
of work. Bearing in mind that work is normally a
social activity and that it may require intensive
communication and collaboration between
employees, the significance of the above-
mentioned changes and their effects on jobs
transformation are unquestionable (Meske &
Junglas, 2021).
All the above changes and needed adaptations
impose the demand for a clear definition of digital
workplace as well as its success factors, starting
from the competencies and attitudes of employees
to the implementation of specific tools, techniques
and applications.
1. Goals and methodology of the
systematic literature review
In this paper Systematic Literature Review
(SLR) is performed following the methodology
developed by Barbara Kitchenham and others in
several publications (Kitchenham et al., 2009,
2010; Turner, Kitchenham, Budgen, & Brereton,
2008). The review starts by defining the research
goals and development of the research protocol,
followed by identification of the key databases and
papers in them based on defined keywords. Then,
the review continues with the analysis, selection
and quality assessment of publications. The review
ends with data extractions and synthesis.
The main goal of this paper is to identify key
research publications in leading bibliographical
and citation bases, in order to develop a
comprehensive definition of digital workplace and
its transformation processes and concepts.
Additionally, it defines the key success factors of
the transformation process and set a direction for
future research in this field.
The aim of the literature review was to identify
empirical and theoretical analysis related to the
digital workplace as part of the general digital
transformation, but also to identify the
shortcomings of current research and providing
directions for the future research.
The review first defines the basic research
questions on the topic of digital workplace and in
accordance with that, provides comprehensive and
overall digital workplace definitions that can be
used by practitioners and future researchers.
2. Source materials
The review started with a search of journals and
papers, conference proceedings, reports and other
similar related scientific and professional literature
in the following bibliographical and citation
databases:
 Web of Science (WoS) by Clarivate
Analytics,
 Scopus by Elsevier,
 Xplore by The Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
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 Electronic library (eLibrary) by The
Association for Information Systems
(AIS).
Additionally, books, guides and other literature
(e.g., selected papers in published monographs)
were added, following the keyword rule. Those
publications were extracted from the following
databases: SpringerLink (EISZ) and Springer E-
book packages. The above-mentioned databases
were searched by the keywords “digital
workplace”. Additional criteria were:
 Publications primary language must be
English or German,
 The source/paper should have been
published after 2010
 The paper must be peer-reviewed
publication.
The first phase of literature review included
search of the specific databases related to the
subject of the research (subject or topic, depending
on the different database) and filtered papers from
journals and conferences proceedings, books and
other publications. The search and review process
consisted of several steps: primary results
scanning, filtering of results based on title, filtering
based on abstract and final selection based on the
content and conclusion of the publications (Figure
1). Some of the publications have been added
bearing in mind those were used as primary source
in previously selected publications.
Figure 1 Literature review process
Source: the authors’ contribution
The primary results of the database scan
included counting the publications followed by
further review of the results. The first pass database
search results are presented in Table 1 as numbers
of “hits”. Further filtering was implemented using
the desktop application for quoting and filtering
literature Mendeley, with the same add-in for MS
Word. The application identified identical
publications that occurred in more than one
database.
Table 1 Quantity of the results after databases were
searched by keywords
Database Number of hits based on the keywords
“digital workplace”
WoS 1,401
Scopus 1,643
IEEE Xplore 176
AIS eLibrary 2,988
Source: the authors, early spring 2021 search
The results were further filtered in the second
phase, based on several criteria: existence of
keywords in the title or abstract, connection of the
paper with the subject of research and whether the
publication comes from a related scientific field
(Figure 2).
Figure 2 Criteria for filtering publications - second phase
Source: the authors
Some of the publications were in more than one
database. Majority of the papers found addressed
the digital workplace from an unrelated scientific
viewpoint or were unrelated to the research topic.
The review continued with 114 publications in the
next phase, without duplicates and including
books, guides and other related publications. In the
third phase some of the primary sources of those
114 publications were added.
Publications are divided in three basic groups:
papers from journals, papers from scientific
conference proceedings and, edited books and
other publications (Table 2).
Table 2 Quantity of review sources by group, second
phase
Type of source Number
Conference Proceedings 37
Papers from scientific journals 57
Edited book and other publications 20
Total 114
Source: the authors
In the next phase, we analyzed the conclusion
and content of the publication for each of the
following factors, in order to identify review
segments:
 Subject of publication research,
 Sample size and industry selection,
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
Relation to the SLR research topic,

Limitations of the research,

Recommendation for the future research.
When we plot the line graph of numbers of
publications per year over time, there is a clear
volume increase or upward trend. Number of the
publications in the period 2012- 2015 was stable.
However, after 2016 and especially after 2018,
growth in number of papers was significant, which
suggests that research interest for this subject has
been increasing in recent years (Figure 3).
Figure 3 Number of publications per year
Source: the authors
There have been fewer than ten publications in
the years before 2016 compared to 31 in 2019 or
38 in 2020. Therefore, progressive growth in the
number of publications was present throughout the
decade and this upward trend seems to be
continuous.
When we separate or dissect the change in
volume of different publications over time, it
becomes evident that journal papers have the most
significant growth. Proceedings, after initial
growth, are decreasing in total number. Books,
reports and other publications have also grown
which might be more correlated with increased
professionals’ interest in digital workplace
transformation. Therefore, we can conclude that
conferences directed the scientific community
towards digital workplace transformation which
became the topic of journal papers afterwards
(Figure 4).
Figure 4 Number of publications per year by type of
publication
Source: the authors
We grouped the publications into four main
categories of research type: theoretical
publications, systematic literature reviews of the
subject, exploratory and empirical research and
case studies. More than half of the publications are
theoretical as expected, but it is also interesting to
note that empirical and exploratory research
participates in more than a quarter of total papers
(Figure 5).
Figure 5 Publications by type of the research
Source: the Author’s contribution
Analysis of the reviewed papers suggests that
even if there is a high number of hits with digital
workplace as part of their title, abstract or
conclusion, only one third of them have strong
focus on digital workplace as contemporary
phenomena. Many publications, even if they have
words “digital workplace” in the tittle, are only
partly related to the subject of digital workplace
transformation, which is definitely a limitation of
the current state of research on this subject and
suggests that this term is often misused.
3. Further analysis and results
3.1. Research focus
Topics of screened research papers are extremely
varied. They range from digital workplace
elements to different success factors of the
transformation process.
Köffer (2015) provides a concise review of the
literature on the digital workplace of the future in
his study, focusing exclusively on leading journals
and papers on topics related to collaboration,
compliance, mobility and stress in the digital
workplace. He also makes recommendations based
on the literature within each of the four targeted
digital workplace topics.
Attaran et al. (2019) focus on the changing
nature of the workplace, emphasizing the
importance of smart workplace technologies as
well as identifying key determinants of the digital
workplace implementation success.
The topics of the research are sometimes the
types of digital workplace designs, i.e.
identification of differences between those focused
on people and those focused on processes or
0
20
40
2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020
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success of the different digital workplace models
(Byström, Ruthven, & Heinström, 2017; Lestarini,
Raflesia, & Surendro, 2016; Richter, Heinrich,
Stocker, & Schwabe, 2018; Schmidt, Praeg, &
Gunther, 2018; Williams & Schubert, 2018;
Zimmer, Baiyere, & Salmela, 2020).
Research is sometimes focused on the
importance of certain digital workplace
transformation success factors, such as support of
employees and their influence on the success itself.
One of the papers examined the factors that lead
employee support for digital transformation from
the choice of technologies through organizational
change to the design of the digital workplace itself
(Meske & Junglas, 2021).
Papers in the field of digital workplace design
evaluation are focused on certain industries, such
as small service businesses (Attaran et al., 2019) or
wholesale (Meske & Junglas, 2021). Some papers
focus on the analysis of the data collected from a
certain given set of companies: e.g., 13 companies
in the analysis “Design for the Digital Workplace”
by Williams and Schubert (2018). Research on
digital transformation at the micro level focuses on
individuals. Thus, a study investigating the impact
of employee support on digital workplace
transformation includes 150,000 respondents in a
specific wholesale industry and is limited to
Germany (Meske & Junglas, 2021). Also, the focus
of the research is limited to a selected set of
companies and users of a particular software or
system (Williams & Schubert, 2018) or employees
in one industry and one region e.g., employees in
the wholesale trade in Germany (Meske & Junglas,
2021).
Another topic of the research papers was the
development of various models related to the
digital workplace. Thus, Eckhardt et al. (2018) and
others develop the so-called “Virtual Work
Development Model” as a guide for companies
striving for transition to a virtual workforce with
the purpose of building a virtual workspace using
easily accessible and highly effective technologies
to regulate collaboration and communication
between dislocated workers. The same group of
authors, through their model, state that there are
three types of readiness of employees for the
transition to a virtual workplace: mental readiness,
technological readiness and social readiness.
Additionally, they provide overview questions to
examine these types of readiness (Eckhardt et al.,
2018).
One of the limitations of the current SLR is that
they do not include papers from top ranked and
indexed databases (such as WoS, Scopus, IEEE
etc.). On the other hand, some SLR are exclusively
based on papers from the leading databases but
they include relatively insufficient numbers of
papers (Köffer, 2015).
In addition to the usual keywords, such as
digital workplace, digital transformation and
collaboration, there are other keywords that are
used in the publications: digital workplace design,
user cases, enterprise, collaborative systems,
company social software (Williams & Schubert,
2018), compliance, mobility and stress (Köffer,
2015), workplace transformation, future of work,
self-determination, change management,
acceptance (Meske & Junglas, 2021), collaborative
learning, organizational accessibility etc. (Koles &
Nagy, 2014).
A group of papers analyzes global and regional
changes of work and future trends of workplace
(Burnett & Lisk, 2019; Bygstad, Aanby, & Iden,
2017; Cárdenas-García, Soria De Mesa, & Romero
Castro, 2019; Chopra & Bhilare, 2020; Crooks et
al., 2020; Darics & Cristina Gatti, 2019;
Egloffstein, 2018; Farrell, Newman, & Corbel,
2021; Francis & Scheers, 2013; Geng, Tan, Niu,
Feng, & Chen, 2019; Gerbaulet & Korn, 2018;
Hawkins & Jacob, 2015; Ivaschenko, Simonova,
Sitnikov, & Shornikova, 2019; Köffer, 2015;
Melzer & Diewald, 2020; Odarenko, 2019; Okros,
2020; Poch et al., 2020; Schwarz et al., 2020;
Seifert & Nissen, 2018; Shivakumar, 2020; van
Laar, van Deursen, van Dijk, & de Haan, 2019;
Vukelić & Čizmić, 2019; Walker & Lloyd-Walker,
2019; Willment, 2020; Yordanova, 2019; Yu,
Burke, & Raad, 2019) and another group of
publications deals with education and upskilling as
well as their influence to digital workplace
transformation (Bartlett-Bragg, 2017; Brahma,
Tripathi, & Sahay, 2020; Harteis, 2018; Harteis,
Goller, & Caruso, 2020; Ifenthaler, 2018; Kayser,
2019; Montebello et al., 2019; Oberländer,
Beinicke, & Bipp, 2020; Pata & Hirv, 2017;
Phillips, 2016; Ravenscroft, Schmidt, Cook, &
Bradley, 2012; Rehe, Schneider, & Thimm, 2020;
Sarsar & Yilmaz, 2018; Soon, Chiang, On, Rusli,
& Fun, 2020; Tripathy, 2019; van der Stappen &
Zitter, 2016; Wang, Chen, Yu, Huang, & Chen,
2020; Zaphiris & Ioannou, 2020).
Another group of publications focuses only on
specific aspects or physical components of the
workplace such are some hardware, ergonomics,
communication technologies, gamification, virtual
and augmented reality in workplace, knowledge
management and knowledge recognition or work
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safety and health (Abdullah, 2018; Baptista, Stein,
Klein, Watson-Manheim, & Lee, 2020; de Souza
Vianna, Leite, Butterworth, Taiar, & Machado,
2020; Dodel & Mesch, 2020; Englert, Woodcock,
& Cant, 2020; Ferreira, Araújo, Fernandes, &
Miguel, 2017; Garza, 2019; Hanafizadeh,
Ghandchi, & Asgarimehr, 2017; Hofma, Avital,
Blegind Jensen, & Hofma, 2017; Kim, Park,
Jeong, Josue, & Valdez, 2018; Koch, Yan, &
Curry, 2019; Kotsopoulos et al., 2017; Kuhlang et
al., 2019; Lee et al., 2019; Li & Herd, 2017; Mah
et al., 2016; Meyer von Wolff et al., 2019; Meyer
Von Wolff et al., 2020; Miele & Tirabeni, 2020;
Pompeii, 2020; Richardson, 2021; Rodriguez-
Bustelo et al., 2020; Shelton & Smith, 2021; von
Wolff et al., 2019; Zhang & Leidner, 2014) or on
importance of organizational factors such are
management, human resources management,
innovation management and employee acceptance
for the success of digital workplace or its
components (Bader & Kaiser, 2017; Baptista et al.,
2020; Dery et al., 2017; Dery & Sebastian, 2017;
Eckhardt et al., 2018; Fabbri, Mandreoli,
Martoglia, & Scapolan, 2019; Frank, Schmidt,
Gimpel, & Schoch, 2018; Genzorova, Corejova, &
Stalmasekova, 2019; Gerten, Beckmann, &
Bellmann, 2019; Greeven & Williams, 2017;
Haddud & McAllen, 2018; Jarrahi & Eshraghi,
2019; Kissmer, Knoll, Stieglitz, & Gross, 2018;
Kissmer, Potthoff, & Stieglitz, 2018; Martensen et
al., 2016; McParland & Connolly, 2020; Meske,
2019; Meske et al., 2020; Meske & Junglas, 2021;
Nitschke et al., 2019; Oravec, 2020; Petersen,
2016; Richter & Richter, 2020; Yalina & Rozas,
2020; Zöller et al., 2020).
3.2. Current definitions of digital workplace
The term digital workplace was originally
mentioned by Charles Grantham and Larry Nichols
in 1993 (Grantham & Nichol, 1993). Their
understanding and definition of this concept was
within the limits of technological and
organizational development of the business at that
time. In this paper they explain the link between
technology, teamwork and business processes as
well as their impact on customer satisfaction. They
also state that companies can make the transition to
a digital workplace as well as integrate advanced
communication technologies into key business
operations by overcoming obstacles to these
changes. They pay special attention to
management software and procedures that
encourage the use of computers and
telecommunications. Despite the fact that times in
the early nineties were significantly different from
today, it can be said that these two authors not only
set the basic definition of the digital workplace but
also predicted some of the trends and even pointed
out the need for the companies and individuals to
adapt to the digital transformation of business
which to some extent had already begun
(Grantham & Nichol, 1993).
According to William and Shubert (2018)
digital workplace characteristics are grouped into
three basics headings, which could be a ground for
establishing a comprehensive definition:
 Organizational strategy and digital
workplace design;
This feature implies that the digital
transformation of the workplace should be
part of the overall organizational strategy
and commitment to a new way of working,
to enable the smooth establishment of a new
work culture, to be a framework for
designing and defining the development of
technology platforms to support
collaborative and flexible work, be future-
oriented, adaptable and evolving in line with
the development of technologies and labor
legislation.
 Employees and work;
In short, digital workplace design should
have the employee in focus and provide
conditions for employees to be productive
as well as to support the exchange of data,
information and knowledge as well as to
encourage employee engagement,
collaboration and interaction.
 Technology platforms;
As an integrated platform, technology
provides tools for the employees to be
productive in doing their jobs. In addition,
the mentioned platforms should be
integrated into the overall information
system of the company and independent of
the location of the work, thus enabling
flexible but integrated work of employees.
Current definitions of the digital workplace
differ in the extent to which they are broader than
the simple integration of the information
technology.
Kissmer et al. (2018) state that “knowledge
exchange, productivity and creativity are pillars of
the digital workplace”, without even mentioning
technology or tools.
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The results of primary research on a larger
sample of individuals indicate that the digital
transformation of the workplace should be
significantly broader than the acceptance of
technology, i.e., it should enable the workforce to
feel autonomous, competent and connected to
others (Meske & Junglas, 2021).
The business and the academy define the digital
workplace in different ways. Intel defines
technology, agile workplace, and collaboration as
pillars of the digital workplace (Constant, 2017 as
cited in Attran et al., 2019). Other sources and
authors, according to the primary literature review
by Attaran and others (2019), state that the digital
workplace framework includes three building
blocks: personal performance, team performance,
and organizational performance that together
provide an overview of all activities and projects.
A digital workplace is also defined as a holistic
set of tools, platforms and workplaces, delivered in
an applicable and productive way but also as a set
of technologies that employees use to perform
tasks in their workplace (Williams & Schubert,
2018b).
The digital workplace can also be defined as a
phenomenon in which new technologies cause
significant changes in a wide range of aspects
related to work: changes in the way employees
perform work, changes in employee work
processes and changes in their social relationships
in the organization to a gradual change in overall
work experience (Meske & Junglas, 2021).
Attaran and others (2019) define digital
workplace as a collection of the tools in an
organization that enable employees to perform
their tasks. The above mentioned tools include
intranet, communication tools, email, CRM, ERP,
HR systems, calendar and other corporate tools that
help in the general daily functioning of the
business. The digital workplace affects the
physical workspace, technology and people.
Some authors also state that the digital
workplace is a significant organizational resource
for optimizing employee productivity based on
knowledge as well as enabling new more effective
ways of working (Köffer, 2015).
William and Schubert (2018) define a digital
workplace as an integrated technology platform
that provides all tools and services to employees to
efficiently perform their work, independently or in
collaboration with others, regardless of where they
are located whereas all are strategically and
organizationally coordinated through digital
workplace design. to meet future organizational
requirements and technologies.
The way of doing business in the last twenty
years has changed significantly and is oriented
towards digitalization and digital transformation
(Kahrović & Avdović, 2021). An increasing
number of projects, communications and daily
operational work are performed digitally using
modern tools and technologies. Certainly, the
digital transformation of the workplace is far more
than the tools themselves and implies
organizational, strategic and process changes in
order to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of
the modern workplace. Office documents and
projects have largely gone online and instant
messaging systems and email have become a
popular communication choice for business
correspondence.
There are three main trends that have
influenced the establishment and definition of the
digital workplace (Attaran et al., 2019):
 Clutter information (Information
overload): The amount of information is
growing exponentially and finding,
filtering and forwarding of information is
much more difficult,
 The need for higher speed: The modern
workplace is changing significantly faster
than before and employees are expected to
work faster, collaborate and be more
effective and efficient in their work,
 Workforce Demographics: Businesses face
the challenge of meeting the changing
demands of a multigenerational workforce
and different generational groups: on the
one hand, baby boomers retire and on the
other, millennials are IT enthusiasts who
expect flexible working hours and simple
tools.
Intel defines several segments and phases of
establishing a digital workplace. Below are the
parts and phases listed by Constant (2017 2017 as
cited in Attran et al., 2019):
 Physical transformation of the working
place – agile workplace
The author states that traditional offices and
workplaces are often expensive, inefficient,
inflexible and challenging for scaling and
modification, and therefore it is necessary to focus
on an integrated platform with front and back-
office tools.
The author states that the digital workplace
should satisfy the following criteria: characteristics
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of the digital place (which can be different, from
the so-called home office, coworking space to third
places) which implies easy access, portability, the
possibility of continuous operation of the
organization in one region or globally and the
ability to work outside of corporate constraints;
and the characteristics of a distributed early
workplace which implies the fact that the
workplace is no longer just a physical office space
but a combination of physical, virtual, social and
mental space that intertwine with the aim of
creating a collaborative workplace.
 Solutions in the field of digital technologies
The author notes the importance of the
existence of appropriate technologies and IT
infrastructure designed and delivered by functional
teams with the aim of repairing systems and
improving organizational network infrastructure to
every switch, router and firewall as well as
appropriate software solutions from system to
application. This part of the digital workplace
includes the selection of cloud technology, big data
analytics and similar segments of the application of
digital technologies in the work and improvement
of work
 Collaboration in the workplace
Here, the author states the need for platforms
for knowledge sharing, especially in the segment
of problem solving in dislocated locations, but also
the choice of communication channels for
company employees, which includes:
collaboration platform, social networking tools,
corporate intranet and public internet. Also, there
is the unquestionable importance of virtualization
and virtualization of work as well as enabling work
on different devices and technologies of users.
Two categories of digital workplace design are
identified: the one focused on people and the one
focused on processes. Table 3 below is an
illustration of the characteristics of each of these
two focuses (Williams & Schubert, 2018):
Table 3 Digital workplace design - features and uses
Focus on People
Information and Knowledge
Management
Focus on Processes
Business Process Support
Networked company platform Multifunctional integrated
platform
Solution: portal Effective tool for business
processes
Exchange of information and
documents Project support
Focus:
Content and communication
Focus:
Processes and coordination
Source: Williams & Schubert, 2018
The digital workplace is interpreted and
designed in different ways by different
organizations to meet different organizational
requirements and expectations. These differences
may depend on the business sector, the historical
development of the company, but also on the nature
of the implementation of a particular chosen
solution. As such, the next step should include
research into differences in definition and the
factors that lead to differences in a deeper way in
order to understand the digital-transformative
character of the workplace (Williams & Schubert,
2018).
A modern workplace should provide employees
with a continuous experience as if they were clients
of the company, i.e., the employee feels at all times
as a factor of success of the company and not as a
mere executor of work. Leaders expect their digital
workplace (Attaran et al., 2019) to:
• raise employee engagement,
• enable employees to achieve business
results faster, and
• encourage employees to lower costs and
increase work efficiency.
The digital workplace, among other things,
enables employees to successfully perform their
tasks through appropriate platforms, software and
devices. Digital workplace is alternative model of
working which improves employees’ performance,
agility, productivity, collaboration and engagement
as well as work-life balance (Dery & Sebastian,
2017; Meske & Junglas, 2021; Haddud &
McAllen, 2018).
Additionally, in the report (Deloitte, 2016), the
digital workplace encompasses more than tools or
a virtual office and presents a framework that
includes the following four components:
1. Benefit and use: collaboration,
communication and connection;
Productive business connections within
natural working groups that enable
knowledge sharing throughout the
organization;
2. Technology: a set of digital tools; The key
is in embracing the right tools for
employees to perform their assigned tasks
efficiently;
3. Control: management, risk and
compliance; The flow of information and
its use must be harmonized with the
organizational policies and legal
regulations of a particular industry;
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4. Business drivers: measurable business
values; The direction of the organization
should be a guide and direction for the
digital workplace.
Digital workplace brings specific challenges
and it can fragment work but it also enables
employees to enjoy technological contribution to
collaboration and cooperation among employees,
sometimes distant and in different time zones
(Brahma et al., 2020).
One of the basic positive effects of establishing
a comprehensive digital workplace is minimizing
the so-called “time wasters” (Attaran et al., 2019):
 ineffective meetings, because meetings
cost money and any waste of time through
ineffective meetings leads to economic
costs;
 email management, because employees
spend a lot of time reading, replying and
sorting emails, so spending time on these
tasks is also spending money on
organization;
 searching for information and people as a
cost to the organization and a significant
waste of time;
 duplicating work as a redundant activity
that involves performing the same task
multiple times or repeating a process
previously repeated in another task or
activity.
Research also shows that flexible working
hours and a digital workplace have a positive effect
on workers' absence, including less absence due to
health problems, less depression in workers, less
sleep problems and lower levels of stress The most
significant advantage of creating a digital
workplace is to improve worker productivity
accompanied by worker satisfaction, improved
worker experience and increased collaboration
among workers, reduced operating costs, increased
innovation, improved customer experience and
ultimately increased revenue (Attaran et al., 2019).
3.2. Future research recommendations by
researchers
Previous research suggests that the future focus
of theory and practice of digital workplace
transformation should be on the identification of
the enabling and limiting effects of digital tools and
to explore empirical evidence of the success of
digital workplace implementation in a variety of
organizations.
Meske and Junglas (2021) point out that future
research should also focus on the micro level of
digital transformation in order to identify the
impact of digital transformation workplace and
associated routine operations as well as negative
effects at the micro level and their impact on
worker satisfaction, such as the so-called
negativity and technological stress.
In addition, it would be useful to investigate
organizational and psychological factors due to
extensive exposure to virtual workplaces that may
directly or indirectly affect organization and digital
transformation with special reference to the lack of
face-to-face communication. Also, employee
motivation as a factor in accepting the elements of
digital workplace transformation requires
additional research through case studies and
empirical research (Koles & Nagy, 2014).
Some studies indicate the reasons for the lack
of effective use of the digital workplace by
employees, which may be further investigated in
the future because the observed shortcomings are
mostly related to the application part of the digital
workplace (Attaran et al., 2019), namely:
 challenges and difficulties of applying to
different applications;
 inability to access data and applications in
and out of the office; and
 need for help in accessing data.
The four primary characteristics of the digital
workplace – collaboration, compliance, mobility,
stress reduction and minimization of the so-called
“waste” in the organization – are research areas of
Köffer (2015), who in his work on digital space
design, explores the above characteristics and,
through the categorization of practical impacts,
develops fifteen related concepts as useful tools for
digital workplace design by professionals in the
future. However, as the author himself states, his
study is limited to selected top works and the
mentioned concepts and recommendations in
workplace design should be expanded, either by
consulting additional literature or by consulting
specific domain experts from the digital
transformation of certain specific activities.
Additionally, there is no uniform definition of
the term digital workplace and not only a large
number of companies but also researchers foster
the misleading belief that simple tools like email
and social networks can be considered as a digital
workplace.
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3.4. Limitations of the current research
Most of the current research in the domain of
digital workplace transformation have identified
limitation as a part their publications. Some of the
authors focus exclusively on a limited number of
companies or on a specific industry. Thus, one of
the most specialized papers on the topic of digital
workplace is focused on the success of digital
workplace implementation in small service
companies (e.g., Attaran et al., 2019) or they focus
only on selected companies (Eckhardt et al., 2018).
Some authors, such as Köffer (2015), focus
exclusively on selected top journals and use this as
a basis for their proposals, which, regardless of
quality, are based on a relatively small sample of
consulted literature from exclusively leading
journals and as such require additions or
extensions. The largest available literature review,
according to Attaran et al. (2019), cites forty-six
sources of literature but mostly coming outside
referent bibliographic databases (such are Web of
Science or Scopus), including some web sources,
reports and other sources. Additionally, the authors
use limited and unreliable sources from various
websites that are often the attitude of individuals
and can hardly be considered valid scientific
sources. In addition, reports and corporate sources
have been used as literature, which can often have
a hidden agenda or the promotion of certain
products or tools that can be used to establish a
digital workplace.
Research related to individuals and their
relationship to digital transformation is often
focused on a smaller group or even just one
company, which is a significant limiting factor in
drawing conclusions and research
recommendations.
3.5. Future research recommendation
There is a well-justified need for further research
of digital workplace transformation. This subject
has an increased presence after COVID-19
pandemic and almost every sector, including the
public, private, for profit or not for profit sectors
have been affected with significant changes in the
way of doing everyday work. Current research
publications emphasize that it is not only a
technological change that is present, such as use of
specific tools but also there is organizational and
management change that have an important role in
the transformation process.
Future research should focus on specific sectors
and industries that might be a business, industry or
a specific sector such as public administration,
education or healthcare which are all strongly
affected by latest changes. Additionally, it would
be useful to develop a separate, unique framework
for digital workplace implementation for each of
the industries in order to explain the transformation
process from its own specific viewpoint.
Conclusion and working definition of
the digital workplace
Workplace is transforming from so-called
traditional to digital, not waiting for individuals
and organizations to be completely ready.
Therefore, the need for focused research in this
field is important not just from a scientific point of
view but also based on business needs for
adjustment to the new normal. In order to achieve
successful digital workplace transformation, an
organization should have adequate transformation
strategy as well as precisely identified expected
outcomes and benefits for the organization. It
should be also accompanying regulation of the
following processes and procedures in order to
achieve the goals.
Digital workplace transformation is a multi-
step process of transition from traditional
workplace, usually considered as a physically
limited space and set of correlated tasks, to digital
workplace, which is more flexible regarding place
and time of work, and supported through
adequate strategic and technological
background.
Therefore, we can define digital workplace as
digital technology-supported working system
consisted of, not only the physical space,
employees and tasks, but also set of strategically
accepted procedures and rules in order to
maximize productivity and improve collaboration,
communication and knowledge management.
However, each industry or a specific profession
requires its own adjustment of the definition and
separate focused framework development in order
to maximize benefits of the digital workplace
transformation.SM
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 Correspondence
Predrag Matković
University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Economics in Subotica
Segedinski put 9-11, 24000 Subotica, Serbia
E-mail: predrag.matkovic@ef.uns.ac.rs
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