Digital Nomads: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

With the recent growth and popularity of the concept “Digital Nomads” (DN) in industry, practitioner's outlets, and publications within the areas of information technology and tourism, this paper aims to address the question, “How academic research on Digital Nomads has developed within information systems discipline?”. To get a better understanding of the research question, the authors conducted a systematic review of the publications available in the Association for Information Systems e-Library to examine the current state of research on DN within the area of information systems (IS). By following guidelines established for conducting reviews of literature in IS, the authors identified 23 papers containing the keyword “Digital Nomads”. Further analysis of each paper revealed only 10 papers that directly addressed the topic of DN. This review paper has identified and presented various definitions of the concept of digital nomads / digital nomadism, a summary of objectives of identified articles, various characteristics of DN, the historical evolvement of the concept of DN, research methods/theories utilized in identified articles, and research gaps identified from relevant sample of articles. We conclude that further empirical research on this topic is needed since it has a significant impact on the future of digital work.