A Cognitive Perspective on Digital Transformation: Literature Review and Research Framework

Managing Digital Transformation (DT) has become a top priority for executives as technological advancements and increasing decision-making complexity accelerate challenges in navigating through DT. Acknowledging that cognition (e.g., in the form of thoughts, beliefs, and emotions) is fundamentally relevant during organizational transformation processes, we address the maturing body of DT research from a cognitive perspective. While the study of cognition in management and strategy can look back to decades of investigation, research on the role of cognition in DT is fragmented and still in its infancy. Addressing this gap, we systematically review existing research from information systems, management, and psychology on the role of cognition in DT. Based on identified antecedents, contextual factors, and consequences, and a conceptualization of cognition, we provide an integrative framework for cognitive DT research and derive four promising research avenues. We thereby provide guidelines to develop strategies for successful DT and organizational action

Understanding Business Process Evolution in Digital Ventures

Business processes are at each company\u27s core and must be adapted permanently to react to changing markets, substantial growth, or legal regulations. Especially digital ventures have the potential to evolve fast, and consequently, their business processes need to change at the same speed. Two streams of literature have looked into this. Traditional business process management sees business processes, once implemented, as relatively stable. In contrast, digital entrepreneurship literature highlights the inherent flexibility of digital ventures. Based on a multiple case study of five digital ventures, we analyze how entrepreneurs deal with this tension when business processes evolve. Building on entrepreneurial bricolage, we propose two types of resource recombination that we find, namely, usage of existing private resources and re-configuring of resources already being used within the venture. These insights contribute to extending our understanding of the evolution of business processes

Addressing Inertia in Pro-Environmental Behavior through Nudges: A Review of Existing Literature and a Framework for Future Research

To counteract global warming, individuals must adopt pro-environmental behaviors, but many prefer their established behaviors because of inertia. This paper analyzes how we can address the inertia that hinders pro-environmental behavior using digital nudges. Our structured literature review finds 19 out of 20 studies that show how decision information nudges like feedback overcome behavioral inertia. Most of the habitual patterns we identified could be attributed to private household behaviors like inefficient energy or water consumption. We contribute a framework for how the three dimensions of inertia—behavioral, cognitive, and affective inertia—are best each addressed using informational, structural, and assistance nudges, respectively

Collaborate to Innovate: Utilizing Design Patterns Cards for Accelerating the Digital Transformation of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises

As more and more organizations reach the limits of their internal capabilities to deal with the challenges induced by digital transformation, they are increasingly forced to seek external digitalization opportunities. In particular, small and medium enterprises are affected by this due to their limited human and financial resources. Currently, there is a lack of overview of options considering limited internal digital capabilities and resources. Thus, we choose an action design research approach to develop an external digitalization activity navigator. As a result, we derive five design principles for successful navigation and 30 activities, which are presented as design pattern cards. Our work can help practitioners and scholars alike to structure external digitalization activities

On the Potential of Business Process Management for Digital Entrepreneurship: Findings from a Literature Review

Digital ventures face significant organizational challenges when scaling, including increasing sales and employee numbers, that withdraw resources from working on their market offerings. While digital entrepreneurship literature stresses the importance of creating processes that balance structure and flexibility to deal with these challenges, business process management (BPM) literature focuses on improving pre-designed business processes. We reconcile these perspectives in a structured literature review to explore how BPM can support digital venturing. We identify synergies and tensions between BPM and digital entrepreneurship and propose three avenues for future research. These include exploring ambidextrous BPM in digital ventures, treating digital venturing as a business process, and developing capabilities for balancing flexibility and structure. We contribute to information systems research by critically reviewing the literature on BPM and digital entrepreneurship and providing potential areas for future investigation

The Nexus of Design Thinking and Intrapreneurship: Insights from a large-scale empirical assessment

Although the nexus of Design Thinking (DT) and corporate entrepreneurship being heralded as promising, the concrete compositional architecture of how DT manifests in practice has received limited scholarly attention. Drawing on the argument that DT can facilitate intrapreneurial innovation by enabling effective cognition, we developed a multidimensional assessment model that measures DT for intrapreneurial innovation in an organizational context and applied it via an online survey to 547 organizations of different sizes and industries. An analysis of the dimensional and sub-dimensional values obtained from the quantitative survey data in general, and concerning industry and firm size types in detail, enriches our understanding of DT’s manifestation in practice. We provide practitioners with a useful tool to assess, benchmark, plan, analyze, and communicate the use of DT for intrapreneurial innovation, and guide future DT and entrepreneurship researchers seeking practitioner-relevant insights with nine propositions derived from our observations

The Unfolding of Digital Transformation in Pre-Digital Companies: A Meta-Case Analysis

Due to the growing dispersion of digital technology, many organizations engage in digital transformation. While digital transformation case studies have increased in the information systems and management domain, different ways in which digital transformation unfolds have been proposed. We perform a qualitative meta-analysis of case studies on digital transformation initiatives. From this analysis, we develop two core narratives (a dialectical and a teleological narrative) that we explain in-depth and derive two research avenues from our analysis. Thus, we are advancing the discussion on the unfolding of digital transformation by 1) summarizing existing case studies into two core narratives and 2) shifting the discussion from an explorative character towards a more explanatory approach to better understand how digital transformation unfolds within pre-digital organizations

Punctuated Multi-Layered Liminality in Digital Transformation: The Case of an Automotive Platform

Digital transformation is often characterized as a liminal process as organizations move from established practices to new ways of organizing afforded by digital technology. Two contrasting views exist, however, on the liminality of digital transformation. One view sees liminality as a discrete transient process, while the other sees it as an on-going continuous transition. Building on a case study around a digital innovation initiative of an incumbent automotive car manufacturer, we offer a third view. We find that digital innovation triggers a phase of punctuated, multi-layered liminality that has a material, structural and temporal layer. We explain how material, temporal and structural tensions unfold at the level of practice, triggering new forms of liminal practices. We further develop three mechanisms (boundary testing, temporal bridging, and structural recoupling) that underpin punctuated multi-layered liminality. We contribute by unpacking the relationship between digital innovation and digital transformation

A Management Control Systems Perspective on Digital Innovation Units

The availability of digital technology allows for the development of new digital services and products, requiring companies to adjust their structure, strategy, and product offering. This phenomenon has been termed digital transformation. As part of this process, companies have set up Digital Innovation Units (DIUs) intending to serve as a fast lane for developing new ideas and products. To date, however, there is little evidence on how DIUs are ensuring that they achieve their objectives. Adopting the lens of management control systems, we investigate a single case study of a DIU. Our findings reveal how different management control systems are implemented in this DIU and we identify two main challenges that the DIU experienced. We discuss these and develop two implications on the use of management control systems in DIUs. Thereby, we contribute to the DIU literature as we provide evidence on management control in DIUs and we extend current discussions on the relationship of management control systems and exploratory early innovation activities