Measuring Digital-Nomad-Oriented Management Practices: Scale Development and Cross-Cultural Validation of DRISA

Digital nomadism extends remote work by combining geographic mobility, digital dependence, and cross-boundary coordination, yet research still lacks a validated measure of the management practices that make work-from-anywhere arrangements organizationally viable in practice. This study develops and validates DRISA, a five-dimensional measure of digital-nomad-oriented management practices comprising Digital Integration, Remote Collaboration, Individual Autonomy, Spatial Freedom, and Agile Management. Using an exploratory sequential mixed-methods design, we first conducted 42 semi-structured interviews to generate and refine items and then reduced an initial item pool through a pilot survey (N = 80). We subsequently validated the scale across samples from China, the United States, and Europe (main validation N = 372; pooled N = 452 including the pilot sample). Results supported a correlated five-factor structure, strong reliability and convergent validity, discriminant validity, and configural, metric, and scalar invariance across regions. In the nomological network, DRISA positively predicted psychological empowerment, perceived organizational performance, and retention intention, with empowerment providing additional explanatory value. The study contributes by operationalizing a management architecture for highly mobile knowledge work, advancing cross-cultural measurement in digital nomad research, and providing a diagnostic instrument that researchers and practitioners can use to evaluate how organizations support digital nomads while balancing autonomy, coordination, organizational control, and contextual constraints across sampled settings.