Digital Literacy and Employee Productivity: The Mediating Role of Organizational Support

Abstract

Digital transformation has made digital literacy a core workplace competence, yet the mechanisms through which it raises employee productivity remain unclear. Drawing on conservation of resources theory, organizational support theory and the job demands–resources model, this study proposes that perceived organizational support mediates the relationship between employees' digital literacy and their productivity. It also examines what cross-sectional and longitudinal designs can and cannot reveal about this mechanism. A 17-item instrument and a population model with a priori specified effects were defined. Survey-type data for 400 employees were generated by Monte Carlo simulation and analysed with partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM), consistent PLS (PLSc) and 5,000-sample bootstrapping. Three experiments examined parameter recovery across estimators (1,000 replications), the ability of cross-sectional mediation tests to distinguish the hypothesised model from a reversed and a common-cause model (1,500 replications), and the power and false-positive rate of a three-wave half-longitudinal design (8,000 replications). The measurement model met all conventional criteria (α = .86–.89, composite reliability = .90–.92, AVE = .64–.65, HTMT ≤ .61). Digital literacy was positively related to organizational support (β = .392, p < .001), and support to productivity (β = .445, p < .001). The indirect effect (β = .175, 95 % CI [.131, .223]) accounted for 43 % of the total effect, indicating complementary partial mediation. Standard PLS-SEM under-estimated the indirect effect by 21 %, whereas PLSc was unbiased. Cross-sectional tests 'supported' mediation in at least 99.8 % of samples regardless of whether the true causal order was hypothesised, reversed or driven by a common cause. A three-wave design achieved 92 % power with 200 employees per wave and kept false positives near 5 % with error-free measures. With fallible composite measures, however, false positives rose to 15 % at large samples. The study specifies a resource-based mechanism linking digital literacy to productivity through organizational support and shows that cross-sectional evidence alone cannot establish its direction. It provides a measurement instrument and design guidance for testing the mechanism. The data are simulated, so the estimates illustrate the model and the behaviour of the methods. They are not empirical evidence, and the model must be confirmed with field data.