Abstract
As generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) emerges as a general-purpose technology (GPT), universities face intensifying pressure to move beyond piecemeal technological adoption towards deeper organisational and governance transformation. While prior research highlights the productivity and innovation potential of artificial intelligence, accumulating evidence suggests that technology adoption alone rarely delivers sustained organisational innovation. Drawing on GPT theory, digital transformation scholarship, and organisational recombination, this developmental paper examines how higher education institutions are reconfiguring governance structures, organisational forms, and business models in response to GenAI.
The paper advances the argument that GenAI adoption intensity, although necessary, is insufficient for scalable innovation. Instead, digital governance maturity functions as a critical moderating mechanism that enables universities to manage technological complexity, ethical risk, and institutional inertia. Building on a proposed hierarchical regression design using public AI adoption disclosures, digital infrastructure investments, and programme modularisation indicators, the paper develops three testable hypotheses linking GenAI adoption, governance capability, and innovation scope. The study contributes to the BAM 2026 Innovation Track by advancing a systemic, multi-actor perspective on innovation in universities and by reframing GenAI as an organisational—rather than purely technological—challenge with significant implications for inclusion, institutional resilience, and national innovation systems.