Developing an Organizational Culture Supportive of Business Process Management

In recent years, a holistic understanding of business process management (BPM) has evolved in Information Systems (IS) research. This understanding considers organizational factors such as strategic alignment, governance, people, and culture as important aspects of BPM beyond Information Technology (IT) and methods. Particularly, organizational culture has been increasingly recognized as a critical success factor for the efficiency and effectiveness of business processes. While existing research already examined which cultural values determine a supportive environment for realizing BPM objectives and how these values can be measured, it has not been explored to date how such a supportive organizational culture can be developed. Based on a review of the literature, we therefore investigate the case of a global IT software provider to gain a first understanding of strategies organizations can implement to develop a supportive cultural setting for their BPM approach. We show how these findings extend recent studies in BPM research

At the Crossroads between Digital Innovation and Digital Transformation

Consumerization, democratization, and platform business logics are not only creating opportunities for new product development, new business models, and new ways of organizing, but in addition are also driving the transformation of established organizational resources and routines. This PDW is designed to address questions at the intersection of digital innovation and digital transformation. These topics are interrelated as successive waves of digital innovation within an industry or at the level of an individual firm and its ecosystem may lead to fundamental transformation of structures, roles and management, culture, competencies and skills, and so forth, depending on the influence of barriers such as inertia and resistance to change. By exploring how and why the new organizing logic of digital innovation impacts and transforms incumbent firms, the workshop addresses questions from four different areas: (1) Why the new logic of digital innovation triggers a digital transformation in incumbent firms; (2) the drivers of this digital transformation in incumbent firms’ immediate environment; (3) how these drivers may under certain conditions alter the structure, strategy, culture, competencies, skills and technology platforms of incumbent firms; (4) the trajectories of digital transformation journeys inside incumbent firms

Network e-Volution

Modern society is a network society permeated by information technology (IT). As a result of innovations in IT, enormous amounts of information can be communicated to a larger number of recipients faster than ever before. The evolution of networks is heavily influenced by the extensive use of IT, which has enabled co-evolving advanced quantitative and qualitative forms of networking. Although several networks have been formed with the aim to reduce or deal with uncertainty through faster and broader access to information, it is in fact IT that has created new kinds of uncertainty. For instance, although digital information integration in supply chains has made production planning more robust, it has at the same time intensified mutual dependencies, thereby actually increasing the level of uncertainty. The aim of this working paper is to investigate the aspects of evolving networks and uncertainty in networks at the cutting edges of different types of networks and from the perspective of different layers defining these networks

Digital Ethnography: At the Crossroads of Mirage, Mosaic, and Mirror

Digital technologies are ubiquitous and innovation lies in recombination of modules and different architectural layers: content, service, network and device. Consequently, we witness the upsurge of digitalization in our everyday lives. From a researcher’s perspective, this alters both the research site and the research process. Even though digital ethnography is an accepted method, we can still take a step back and ask what it indeed means to add “digital” to ethnography. Besides the challenge to demarcate the phenomenon and uncover its parts, the boundary between the observer and the observed are becoming hazy. In this paper we rethink the notion and practice of digital ethnography by (1) analytically separating digital technologies into their architectural layers and (2) combining the critical and reversing approach in ethnographic practice. The emerging topics induce us to consider digital ethnography as a research practice that stands at the crossroads of mirage, mosaic, and mirror

Born Digital: Growth Trajectories of Entrepreneurial Organizations Spanning Institutional Fields

Industrial-age institutional fields shape the way entrepreneurial organizations have traditionally viewed digital technologies. We report on a study of twenty “born digital” organizations to investigate how they draw on and reproduce different institutional fields as they grow, and how they leverage digital technologies during this growth. Our findings suggest that trajectories of born digital organizations are shaped by the institutional fields that they draw upon. Some follow trajectories consistent with established institutional fields, while others span fields across industrial and digital domains. Depending on their “home filed” or “across field” position, born digital organizations adopt practices to enhance their legitimacy seeking practices or design capital building practices

Digital Capabilities for Buffering Tensions of Structure, Space, and Time during Entrepreneurial Growth

Digital technologies are critical to virtually any fast-growing entrepreneurial organizations in a variety of ways. A common theme in entrepreneurial growth literature involves conceiving of growth as a liminal period of transition when certain start-up-related structures and behaviors persist, while other, more professional practices emerge. In this study, we report on an exploratory study of 20 fast-growing entrepreneurial organizations to understand how digitalization influences management practices in entrepreneurial growth. We extend the “digital technology perspective of entrepreneurship” by showing how digital technologies and the development of associated digital capabilities can provide a buffer through which entrepreneurial organizations can professionalize their organizations. Digital capabilities for entrepreneurial growth stand in sharp contrast to those of established organizations. Key enablers of growth call for a layered modular view of digital technologies, stepwise implementation, partial integration, and reuse on the content and service layers

Three Types of Chief Digital Officers and the Reasons Organizations Adopt the Role

Digital innovation impacts every industry, and in response many organizations have introduced a new C-suite leadership role - the chief digital officer (CDO). Based on interviews with 35 CDOs from various sectors, we have identified the domains where successful CDOs build digital capabilities (digital innovation, data analytics and customer engagement) and three types of CDOs - digital accelerators, digital marketers and digital harmonizers. Each type focuses specifically on one of the digital capabilities. The article concludes by considering the relationship between CDOs and CIOs.Click here for podcast summary (mp3) Click here for free 2-page executive summary (pdf)Click here for free presentation slides (pdf

The ‘Digital Façade’ of Rapidly Growing Entrepreneurial Organizations

Entrepreneurial organizations that grow into larger established enterprises typically undergo periods of rapid growth that are rife with challenges. Although it is clear that digital technologies have been a key driver in organizational transformation for decades, their role in the growth of entrepreneurial organizations is virtually absent in the literature. This paper reports the findings from an exploratory study of 16 entrepreneurial organizations that are undergoing, or have undergone, periods of rapid growth. Our analysis suggests that digital technologies often complement or even substitute for organizational practices commonly associated with enabling growth. From this analysis, we identify one important mechanism whereby digital technologies enable this growth—what we refer to as the “digital façade.” A minimally-implemented digital facade enables companies to loosely couple their activities from the presentation of these activities to customers and partners. This façade provides a space for the organizations to build necessary digital capabilities

At the crossroads between digital innovation and digital transformation

ICIS 2019 Proceedings. 7, Munich, Germany, Dec. 15-18. Consumerization, democratization, and platform business logics are not only creating opportunities for new product development, new business models, and new ways of organizing, but in addition are also driving the transformation of established organizational resources and routines. This PDW is designed to address questions at the intersection of digital innovation and digital transformation. These topics are interrelated as successive waves of digital innovation within an industry or at the level of an individual firm and its ecosystem may lead to fundamental transformation of structures, roles and management, culture, competencies and skills, and so forth, depending on the influence of barriers such as inertia and resistance to change. By exploring how and why the new organizing logic of digital innovation impacts and transforms incumbent firms, the workshop addresses questions from four different areas: (1) Why the new logic of digital innovation triggers a digital transformation in incumbent firms; (2) the drivers of this digital transformation in incumbent firms' immediate environment; (3) how these drivers may under certain conditions alter the structure, strategy, culture, competencies, skills and technology platforms of incumbent firms; (4) the trajectories of digital transformation journeys inside incumbent firms