Green digital operations and employee productivity in Nigerian fintech: The moderating role of digital literacy

Abstract

Green Digital Operations (GDO) are widely promoted as a route to both environmental sustainability and better employee productivity, yet recent evidence from Nigerian service and fintech firms reports that this relationship is weak, non-significant, or even negative, a pattern this paper labels the digital transition paradox. Existing studies have mostly tested the direct effect of GDO on productivity without explaining the conditions under which the effect strengthens, weakens, or reverses. The objective of this paper is to develop and justify a conceptual framework that explains how digital literacy shapes the direction and strength of
the relationship between GDO practices and employee productivity in Nigerian fintech organisations, and to derive testable hypotheses from it. Using a conceptual literature review design focused on theory development, the paper integrates the Natural Resource-Based View, Social Exchange Theory, and the Job Demands-Resources model. It argues that GDO practices are organisational resources whose productivity value depends on employees having enough digital literacy to use them; where literacy is low, the same practices can add cognitive and technical demands that offset or reverse their benefit. Three hypotheses are advanced, and directions for testing them using moderated regression or structural equation modelling are outlined. The paper contributes an integrated explanation of when and why GDO adoption succeeds or fails to raise productivity, and shows practitioners that digital literacy development is a precondition for gaining the benefits of green digital investment.