A conceptual framework of digital transformation in Chinese private universities: Integrating digital leadership, teacher digital competence, and innovative work behavior

Digital transformation has become a strategic imperative for higher education, yet how it is enacted in Chinese private universities and how it reshapes academic work at the teacher level remain insufficiently understood. Prior research often emphasises institutional strategies and technologies, with less attention to the micro-level mechanisms through which leadership and faculty capabilities convert digital investments into sustained innovation. This conceptual paper develops an integrative, multi-level framework explaining how digital leadership can support digital transformation in Chinese private universities by strengthening teachers’ digital competence and, in turn, innovative work behavior. The framework positions digital leadership as an institutional driver that shapes strategic vision, infrastructure investment, and support for experimentation; teacher digital competence as a proximal capability enabling pedagogically meaningful digitalization of teaching practice; and innovative work behavior as the behavioral manifestation of transformation in everyday academic work. Professional identity tensions and contextual pressures are incorporated as boundary conditions that shape when competence is translated into discretionary innovation and when it is redirected toward compliance. By synthesising complementary and contradictory findings, including evidence on underperformance and rhetoric-practice decoupling, the paper offers a coherent perspective on digital transformation in private higher education and outlines priorities for future empirical research in the Chinese private university sector.