Unpacking the Difference Between Digital Transformation and IT-Enabled Organizational Transformation

By Lauri Wessel, Abayomi Baiyere, Roxana Ologeanu-Taddeï, J. Cha, Tina Blegind Jensen. Journal of the AIS, 2021

651 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Although digital transformation offers a number of opportunities for today’s organizations, information systems scholars and practitioners struggle to grasp what digital transformation really is, particularly in terms of how it differs from the well-established concept of information technology (IT)-enabled organizational transformation. By integrating literature from organization science and information systems research with two longitudinal case studies—one on digital transformation, the other on IT-enabled organizational transformation—we develop an empirically grounded conceptualization that sets these two phenomena apart. We find that there are two distinctive differences: (1) digital transformation activities leverage digital technology in (re)defining an organization’s value proposition, while IT-enabled organizational transformation activities leverage digital technology in supporting the value proposition, and (2) digital transformation involves the emergence of a new organizational identity, whereas IT-enabled organizational transformation involves the enhancement of an existing organizational identity. We synthesize these arguments in a process model to distinguish the different types of transformations and propose directions for future research.

Subfields: Management Information Systems, Management of Technology and Innovation, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ba595744b4a646f95420090978cdf6c2a407f8b1

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Citations in the corpus

Digital transformation and the new logics of business process management (2020, positive): “Such transformations help an organisation to be more e ﬃ cient, e ﬀ ective and reliable in the di ﬀ erent facets of its operational process and value o ﬀ erings (Berente et al., 2016; Orlikowski, 1996; Wessel et al., 2020).”
A Systematic Review of the Literature on Digital Transformation: Insights and Implications for Strategy and Organizational Change (2020, methodology): “In summary and as indicated by recent works (e.g., Wessel et al., 2020), it seems that the phenomenon of DT differs from past IT-related organizational change and cannot, therefore, be explained entirely using established theoretical models (Markus and Rowe, 2018).”
Preparing Workplaces for Digital Transformation: An Integrative Review and Framework of Multi-Level Factors (2021, methodology): “…transformation, recent research suggests that digital transformation is a process of deep, structural change that occurs through the integration of multiple technologies and fundamentally redeﬁnes organizational value and identity (Besson and Rowe, 2012; Skog et al., 2018; Wessel et al., 2020).”
Developing a unified definition of digital transformation (2021, background): “Organizations undergoing ISOT intended to increase efficiency and make work more effective or digital, but their identity claims and value propositions remain the same (Wessel et al., 2020).”