The digital economy, which was once considered as a panacea, is becoming increasingly
viewed as a grand societal challenge – a problem that not only presents significant barriers to many
people but is also so complex that it cannot be tackled by any one single organization. Mangers
influence how the components of the global digital infrastructure, such as data analytics, artificial
intelligence, and robotics impact society. However, mitigating the broad-gauged impacts of the
digital economy, like its impact on the nature of work, would benefit from new ideas about
manger’s roles in the digital economy. Framed in a management learning perspective, this study
collates what we know, and what we need to know, about management and the digital economy.
Overall, this paper suggests that managers need to learn new habits of thought to build a more
balanced, equitable, and sustainable version of digital economy. Perspectives on how to design
management learning environments to help managers think of, then implement, a digital ecosystem
rather than a digital economy will contribute to ongoing debates about management learning that
will advance positive transformations of the nature of work.