Identity metamorphoses in digital disruption: a relational theory of identity

Digital “x”—Charting a Path for Digital-Themed Research

We live in a time when digital technologies reshape most aspects of business and social life. This challenges received assumptions about modes of operation in organizations. As a result, scholars and practitioners increasingly use the label “digital” to signify that something has changed to the extent that a plethora of long-established management concepts are expressed in a new formulaic form of “digital x,” and x can stand for innovation, strategy, transformation, infrastructure, etc. In the information systems discipline and beyond, “digital” has emerged as an oft-used conceptual label to characterize age-long phenomena hitherto described by the IT (or x) label. There is a sense among academic and practitioner communities that digital and IT are not mere synonyms, but beyond the hype, something fundamentally different is being signaled when the “digital” label is invoked. This paper traces the intellectual roots and foundations of the growing use of “digital” as a conceptual label, identifies when the label use is warranted as well as outlines implications that the moniker holds for future scholarship, policy, and practice. In particular, the paper offers actionable guidance that enables more reflective use of the term “digital” as we move forward.

Preparing Workplaces for Digital Transformation: An Integrative Review and Framework of Multi-Level Factors

The rapid advancement of new digital technologies, such as smart technology, artificial intelligence (AI) and automation, robotics, cloud computing, and the Internet of Things (IoT), is fundamentally changing the nature of work and increasing concerns about the future of jobs and organizations. To keep pace with rapid disruption, companies need to update and transform business models to remain competitive. Meanwhile, the growth of advanced technologies is changing the types of skills and competencies needed in the workplace and demanded a shift in mindset among individuals, teams and organizations. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated digitalization trends, while heightening the importance of employee resilience and well-being in adapting to widespread job and technological disruption. Although digital transformation is a new and urgent imperative, there is a long trajectory of rigorous research that can readily be applied to grasp these emerging trends. Recent studies and reviews of digital transformation have primarily focused on the business and strategic levels, with only modest integration of employee-related factors. Our review article seeks to fill these critical gaps by identifying and consolidating key factors important for an organization’s overarching digital transformation. We reviewed studies across multiple disciplines and integrated the findings into a multi-level framework. At the individual level, we propose five overarching factors related to effective digital transformation among employees: technology adoption; perceptions and attitudes toward technological change; skills and training; workplace resilience and adaptability, and work-related wellbeing. At the group-level, we identified three factors necessary for digital transformation: team communication and collaboration; workplace relationships and team identification, and team adaptability and resilience. Finally, at the organizational-level, we proposed three factors for digital transformation: leadership; human resources, and organizational culture/climate. Our review of the literature confirms that multi-level factors are important when planning for and embarking on digital transformation, thereby providing a framework for future research and practice.

Disruption as worldview change: A Kuhnian analysis of the digital music revolution

Why is it that technology-enabled industry disruptions appear entirely inevitable with hindsight, yet practitioners in disrupted businesses typically struggle to detect and respond appropriately to disruption while it is unfolding? We term this surprising contradiction ‘interpretive discontinuity’ and use it to problematize the established understanding of disruption in the literature. We suggest that the contradiction at the heart of interpretive discontinuity holds an important key to what exactly changes during disruption and why. By juxtaposing an empirical case of disruption in the music industry with theoretical resources sensitive to the nature of radical change – Thomas Kuhn’s work in the unrelated field of scientific practice – we demonstrate that it is productive to understand disruption as a Kuhnian paradigm shift. We are then able to trace interpretive discontinuity to the gestalt switch in worldview that accompanies such a paradigm shift. This insight sheds new light on both what is actually ‘disruptive’ about disruption and also on the limitations of prior work theorizing disruption. Our work is important because it adds to the literature on disruptive innovation important yet overlooked conceptual tools in Kuhn’s work – the role of exemplars, the worldview aspect of a paradigm, and paradigm incommensurability.