Digital readiness and work engagement as drivers of academic productivity in Islamic higher education

Abstract In the era of digital transformation, higher education—particularly faith-based institutions—faces the challenge of aligning technological capability with sustained human engagement to maintain academic excellence. This study examines how organizational commitment and digital readiness shape lecturer productivity through work engagement in Islamic Higher Education Institutions (IHEIs) in Indonesia. Drawing on Technology Readiness Theory (TRT), the Job Demands–Resources (JD-R) model, and Social Exchange Theory (SET), the study develops and tests an integrative mechanism in which digital readiness operates as a capability-in-context resource and engagement functions as the motivational conversion process linking resources to performance. Using cross-sectional survey data collected from March to September 2025 from 237 lecturers across six IHEIs in Jambi Province and analyzed with PLS-SEM, the findings show that digital readiness significantly increases work engagement and that work engagement strongly predicts lecturer productivity. In addition, digital readiness shows a significant direct effect on lecturer productivity, indicating that technological capability can improve academic output beyond its motivational pathway via engagement. In contrast, organizational commitment does not significantly predict engagement, suggesting that value-driven attachment alone may be insufficient to activate energetic involvement under digitally demanding academic work unless supported by enabling resources. Mediation testing indicates a significant indirect effect of digital readiness on productivity via work engagement, and the simultaneous significance of the direct and indirect effects supports complementary partial mediation through which readiness translates into Tri Dharma outputs. The study extends the JD-R framework to digitally mediated, faith-based higher education by clarifying how technological and psychological resources jointly shape productivity, while positioning ethical–spiritual principles (e.g., amanah digital and ihsan) explicitly as interpretive lenses rather than empirically tested constructs, and contributes to responsible digital transformation and inclusive quality education aligned with SDG 4.