When Flexibility Fails

Digital Work, Superficial Fulfillment, and the New Psychology of Employee Wellbeing
Erscheinungsjahr 2027
ISBN: 978-981-9282-39-5
Verlag: Springer

Buch, Englisch, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm

Reihe: Human Resource Management

This book examines why digital transformation often fails to improve employee wellbeing, even when organizations invest heavily in remote work, flexible scheduling, digital collaboration tools, and data-driven management systems. The book focuses on a central paradox: digital work appears to give employees more autonomy, flexibility, and control, yet many workers experience greater stress, weaker boundaries, reduced satisfaction, and intensified psychological strain. Drawing on self-determination theory, organizational behavior, information systems research, and large-scale employee review data, the book argues that digital work frequently produces superficial need fulfillment. Employees may appear to gain autonomy through flexible work arrangements, competence through performance dashboards, or connection through digital communication tools, but these same systems can also increase surveillance, availability expectations, algorithmic control, and social isolation. The book develops three core mechanisms: duality, where digital tools simultaneously support and undermine psychological needs; superficiality, where apparent benefits mask deeper constraints; and cascading, where the violation of one psychological need triggers harm across other dimensions. The book is written for scholars, graduate students, and advanced practitioners interested in digital transformation, employee wellbeing, human resource management, organizational theory, and the future of work. It addresses an urgent problem for modern organizations: why providing flexibility is not enough. By explaining when and why digital flexibility fails, the book offers a framework for designing digital work systems that support genuine autonomy, competence, relatedness, and sustainable wellbeing.

Zielgruppe

Professional/practitioner

Autoren/Hrsg.

Li, Yaning

Li, Huifang

Fachgebiete

• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Betriebswirtschaft Bereichsspezifisches Management Personalwesen, Human Resource Management

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Chapter 1. The Flexibility Paradox
Chapter 2. Digital Work as a New Organizational Condition
Chapter 3. Psychological Needs in the Digital Workplace
Chapter 4. Superficial Fulfillment: Duality, Superficiality, and Cascading
Chapter 5. Listening to Employees at Scale
Chapter 6. Why Work-Life Balance Is Not Enough
Chapter 7. Loyalty, Pay, and the Unequal Burden of Digital Control
Chapter 8. Testing the Psychology of Digital Claims
Chapter 9. Digital Values in a Simulated Labor Market
Chapter 10. Alternative Explanations and Evidentiary Confidence
Chapter 11. Designing Human-Centered Digital Work
Chapter 12. Beyond Superficial Flexibility

Über Autor(innen)

Yaning Li is a postgraduate researcher at the School of Management, University of Science and Technology of China. His research focuses on organizational behavior and digital work. His work has been accepted at the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) 2026. He has gained practical experience through internships at ByteDance and CITIC Securities.

Huifang Li is an Associate Professor at the School of Management, University of Science and Technology of China. She has published multiple UTD24 papers, focusing on sharing economy platforms, e-marketplace operations, and organizational misbehavior. Her work appears in , , and .