Digital competencies: A review of the literature and applications in the workplace

Highlights

• Integrate perspectives from science and practice on digital competencies at work.

• Combine findings from extensive literature review and semi-structured interviews.

• Postulate a definition of digital competencies at work to foster understanding.

• Propose comprehensive framework with 25 dimensions of digital competencies at work.

Abstract

In today's organisations and politics, there is a growing awareness of the gap between existing and needed digital competencies of the workforce to master the challenges of the digitalised future at work. Nevertheless, no comprehensive framework or definition of digital competencies at work has been proposed so far. Our aim is to offer a holistic view and broaden the scope of the concept of digital competencies, thereby focussing on applications at work. We combine diverse methods to integrate different perspectives on digital competencies. By conducting an extensive literature review about definitions and frameworks of digital competencies that might be applicable at work, we provide an overview of the current state of the art in research on digital competencies. Additionally, eleven half-structured interviews based on the critical incidents technique (CIT) were conducted to gain insights into the perspectives of professionals with expertise in digitalisation processes and digital competencies. Subsequently, researchers with different educational backgrounds clustered the results from both approaches and agreed on twenty-five dimensions that constitute digital competencies for white-collar workers with office jobs, encompassing a large variety of knowledge, skills, and abilities. The results of this research indicate that even though there is overlapping content, each perspective adds unique content to the concept of digital competencies at work. By creating a coherent and detailed framework and a definition, our research enhances the applicability of professional learning and development of digital competencies at work.

Introduction

Beyond the huge impact of the ongoing digitalisation in our society on our everyday life, new technologies also have a tremendous impact on the way we work (e.g., Murawski & Bick, 2017; Zaphiris & Ioannou, 2016). Devices and software programmes used in professional contexts are constantly renewed to be more efficient and to facilitate work. These changes call for increasing usage of digital information and communication technology (ICT) at work. Indeed the majority of employees today use digital ICT at work, as confirmed by 83% of the participants in a large representative German workforce sample (Arnold, Butschek, & Steffes, 2016). Most workplaces require at least basic digital competencies (Gallardo-Echenique, de Oliveira, Marques-Molias, & Esteve-Mon, 2015). Already in 2006, the European Parliament and the Council identified digital competence as one out of eight key competences for lifelong learning (Ferrari, 2012; van Laar, van Deursen, van Dijk, & de Haan, 2017). In detail, they defined competence as a combination of knowledge, skills and attitudes, and digital competence as “the confident and critical use of Information Society Technology for work, leisure and communication” (Søby, 2013, p. 135).

Therefore, employees have to engage in lifelong learning, and acquire new competencies to adapt to the constantly increasing demands of the fast-changing work environment (e.g., Ahmad, Karim, Din, & Albakri, 2013; Carnevale & Smith, 2013; Cascio & Montealegre, 2016). Indeed, there seems to be a gap between existing and needed digital competencies (DC) of the workforce (e.g., Ancarani & Di Mauro, 2018; Janssen et al., 2013). In the study of Arnold and colleagues (2016), over two-thirds of the interviewed workers indicated that they constantly needed to develop further their competencies at work because of technical innovations. Even though politics and employers are aware of this issue, scientific research focussing on the DC of workers is still scarce (Murawski & Bick, 2017).

The goal of this research is to foster the understanding and add essential knowledge about conceptualizations and theories of DC at work. Therefore, we provide an overview of existing definitions and frameworks with a focus on evaluating their potential applications at work in a literature review. Afterwards, we aim to address the science-practice gap in this field by developing essential dimensions of DC for white-collar workers that are not only based on the literature but also on insights of working practitioners.