Competences for Digital Transformation: Insights from the Norwegian Energy Sector

Numerous established firms are undergoing digital transformations. To manage a digital transformation (DT), companies should develop DT capabilities. One important prerequisite for DT capabilities is DT competence — a bundle of employee skills, knowledge, and expertise necessary for a successful DT. However, research on which competences are essential for a DT is limited, as is research on how established firms can obtain these competences. Based on a longitudinal case study, this paper provides insight into which competences were identified as important for the DT at an established firm in the Norwegian energy sector, and how these competences were obtained. The paper also presents a conceptual model, to better understand and study the concept of DT competence as a prerequisite for DT capabilities

PATTERNS OF INTERACTION: MAKING SENSE OF DIGITALIZATION IN INCUMBENT FIRMS

Current research on digitalization often takes a strategic or change management perspective. More recently, research has pointed to continuous development as essential in digitally enabled change. However, less is known about how continuous development evolves, and how organizational actors interact during continuous development. Our research questions are: (i) which patterns of interaction can we identify in the continuous development of digitalization, and (ii) how can incumbent firms suc- ceed in digitalization through continuous development? We conduct a longitudinal case study of a large grid company, and explore their approach to digitali- zation through continuous development. Applying a sense-making and sense-giving lens, we identify a generic pattern of interaction in continuous digitalization in incumbent firms. Key actors in the pat- tern are the middle management. We identify two interlinked cycles, one for the top management and one for the operational level. Our model highlights new and surprising insight on sense-making and sense-giving in relation to change and digitalization in incumbent firms

Organizing Robotic Process Automation: Balancing Loose and Tight Coupling

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is penetrating organizations at an accelerating rate. This trend is challenging the existing IT governance structures, because RPA usually is acquired and implemented by local business units, outside the control of the IT function. Consequently, how to organize and govern RPA initiatives is a topical issue. The recommendations from prior research are unclear, and there is a call for more research on this area. In this paper, we report from a study on RPA usage in three firms. In particular, we investigate the organizational consequences of having local business units manage the RPA initiatives. We make use of lightweight IT research as our analytical lens, contributing to research by unveiling the consequences and considerations of decentralized management of RPA

Digital Transformation: Drivers, Success Factors, and Implications

In this paper, we explore drivers, objectives, success factors, and implications of digital transformation. This investigation is conducted through a systematic literature review that focuses on empirical contributions in the Information Systems (IS) field. By reviewing prevailing empirical contributions on digital transformation, we provide insight into why organizations undergo digital transformation, how to accomplish such a transformation, and how digital transformation affects an organization

Digital Platform Ecosystem Governance: Preliminary Findings and Research Agenda

This paper explores collaborative governance in digital platform ecosystems and the governance challenges that may occur in such environments. We analyze three different digital platform ecosystems and identify six unresolved key governance issues that we believe are central to the type of digital platform ecosystems we address. This paper has three contributions. First, we add to the literature on digital platform ecosystems by revealing a set of governance challenges regarding ecosystem forming and sustainability. Second, our findings may serve as recommendations for organizations that are planning to establish or that are already running an ecosystem based on a digital platform. Third, we contribute to digital platform ecosystem research by proposing an agenda for future research in this area

The operationalisation of sustainability: Sustainable aquaculture production as defined by certification schemes

Sustainability certification has become an increasingly important feature in aquaculture production, leading to a multitude of schemes with various criteria. However, the large number of schemes and the complexity of the standards creates confusion with respect to which sustainability objectives are targeted. As a result, what is meant by ‘sustainability’ is unclear. In this paper, we examine the operationalisation of the concept from the vantage point of the certifying authorities, who devise standards and grant or withhold certification of compliance. We map the criteria of eight widely-used certification schemes using the four domains of the Wheel of Sustainability, a reference model designed to encompass a comprehensive understanding of sustainability. We show that, overall, the sustainability certifications have an overwhelming focus on environmental and governance indicators, and only display scattered attempts at addressing cultural and economic issues. The strong focus on governance indicators is, to a large degree, due to their role in implementing and legitimising the environmental indicators. The strong bias implies that these certification schemes predominantly focus on the environmental domain and do not address sustainability as a whole, nor do they complement each other. Sustainability is by definition and by necessity a comprehensive concept, but if the cultural and economic issues are to be addressed in aquaculture, the scope of certification schemes must be expanded. The Wheel of Sustainability can serve as a valid lexicon and asset to guide such efforts.publishedVersio

Fish oil replacement in current aquaculture feed : is cholesterol a hidden treasure for fish nutrition?

Teleost fish, as with all vertebrates, are capable of synthesizing cholesterol and as such have no dietary requirement for it. Thus, limited research has addressed the potential effects of dietary cholesterol in fish, even if fish meal and fish oil are increasingly replaced by vegetable alternatives in modern aquafeeds, resulting in progressively reduced dietary cholesterol content. The objective of this study was to determine if dietary cholesterol fortification in a vegetable oil-based diet can manifest any effects on growth and feed utilization performance in the salmonid fish, the rainbow trout. In addition, given a series of studies in mammals have shown that dietary cholesterol can directly affect the fatty acid metabolism, the apparent in vivo fatty acid metabolism of fish fed the experimental diets was assessed. Triplicate groups of juvenile fish were fed one of two identical vegetable oil-based diets, with additional cholesterol fortification (high cholesterol, H-Chol) or without (low cholesterol, L-Chol), for 12 weeks. No effects were observed on growth and feed efficiency, however, in fish fed H-Col no biosynthesis of cholesterol, and a remarkably decreased apparent in vivo fatty acid b-oxidation were recorded, whilst in LChol fed fish, cholesterol was abundantly biosynthesised and an increased apparent in vivo fatty acid b-oxidation was observed. Only minor effects were observed on the activity of stearyl-CoA desaturase, but a significant increase was observed for both the transcription rate in liver and the apparent in vivo activity of the fatty acid D-6 desaturase and elongase, with increasing dietary cholesterol. This study showed that the possible effects of reduced dietary cholesterol in current aquafeeds can be significant and warrant future investigations

Er eksklusive lesere mer verdt enn overlappende lesere? : et casestudie basert på Bergensavisen og Bergens Tidende

Avis er et eksempel på en tosidig medieplattform som må forholde seg til annonsører på en side og lesere på en annen side. Teori om tosidige medieplattformer hevder at eksklusive lesere er mer verdt for en avis enn overlappende lesere, da det gjør denne avisen mer attraktiv som annonseplattform, ettersom dette er eneste avis annonsørene kan nå disse leserne gjennom. En implisitt forutsetning for dette resonnementet er at det er redusert verdi for annonsøren å nå den samme leseren flere ganger, noe som innebærer at et førsteinntrykk er mer verdt for annonsørene enn et andreinntrykk, og at annonsørene dermed er villige til å betale mer for tilgangen til eksklusive lesere enn overlappende lesere. På den måten vil avisene kunne belaste en høyere pris av annonsørene for tilgangen til eksklusive lesere, og de eksklusive leserne vil dermed kunne generere høyere annonseinntekter for avisen enn de overlappende leserne, og på den måten være mer verdt for avisen. På bakgrunn av dette kan man anta at avisenes annonseinntekter øker når graden av eksklusive lesere øker. I denne oppgaven har forfatterne studert om dette stemmer i praksis, med Bergensavisen (BA) og Bergens Tidende (BT) som casegrunnlag. Forfatterne finner en mulig sammenheng mellom avisenes eksklusive lesere og annonseinntekter, som kan indikere at eksklusive lesere er mer verdt enn overlappende lesere for Bergensavisen og Bergens Tidende. Det påpekes imidlertid at andre forhold og faktorer kan spille inn, og at det derfor ikke nødvendigvis er en sammenheng mellom de to variablene, men at de begge kan være påvirket av de samme utenforstående faktorene