Understanding the role of employees in digital transformation: conceptualization of digital literacy of employees as a multi-dimensional organizational affordance

Developing the digital transformation skills framework: A systematic literature review approach

BACKGROUND

Digital transformation (DT) involves integrating digital technologies into organizations to improve productivity, efficiency, and quality. Investing in the workforce's skillsets is essential for successful DT. However, it remains unclear which skillsets are essential.

OBJECTIVES

This study aims to identify and define the essential skillsets needed for exploiting the full potential of DT, and to consolidate the identified skills into a comprehensive framework of DT skills.

METHOD

A systematic literature review was conducted using the PRISMA approach for selecting studies. This led to the selection of 36 articles that were examined using thematic analysis for identifying and consolidating skills into a framework.

RESULTS

The Digital Transformation Skills Framework (DTSF) was developed, which contains six overarching skillsets and 44 underlying skills. The framework covers key skillsets in the areas of digital work, entrepreneurship, evidence-based work, collaboration, communication, and adaptation.

CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION

The DTSF offers a comprehensive understanding of essential skills for today's evolving organizations, addressing a critical gap in existing literature. It is valuable for organizations and HR professionals, serving as a foundation for re- and upskilling initiatives. Ongoing research should expand the framework to include domain-specific DT skills and emerging digital technologies.

Can sharing auditors with customers improve suppliers digital transformation?

Introduction

Promoting enterprises' digital transformation is fundamental to implementing the digital China strategy and realizing high-quality development.

Methods

Taking China's A-share listed companies from 2007 to 2021 as a research sample, this study examines the impact of sharing auditors with customers on the digital transformation of suppliers.

Results

The results show that sharing auditors with customers can promote suppliers' digital transformation, and this promotion effect is stronger among suppliers with weaker bargaining power, lower media attention, and higher auditor industry expertise. In terms of the mechanism of action, sharing auditors with customers can help strengthen the supplier's supervision, alleviate suppliers' financing constraints, and thus facilitate their digital transformation. Further research finds that when suppliers share auditors with their customers, suppliers' digital transformation helps promote innovation.

Discussion

The research conclusion provides effective empirical evidence for alleviating the dilemma of digital transformation of enterprises.

Do political connections facilitate or inhibit firms' digital transformation? Evidence from China's A-share private listed companies

Given the advent of the digital era, digital transformation has become necessary for enterprise development. Political connections are the most important resources for enterprise development in most countries. However, the impact of political connections on corporate digital transformation has yet to be verified. This study uses ERNIE, a large language model, to construct a measurement of corporate digital transformation from the perspective of digital technology application through a textual analysis of the annual reports of A-share privately listed companies from 2008 to 2020 and analyzes the impact of political connections on corporate digital transformation and its mechanism of action. The findings demonstrate that political connections have a significant inhibitory effect on corporate digital transformation. This conclusion still holds after a series of robustness and endogeneity tests. The mechanism analyses demonstrate that political connections primarily affect corporate digital transformation through three mechanisms: weakening risk, inhibiting innovation, and enhancing resource crowding. We theoretically expand the understanding of the economic impact of political connections and provide new ideas for accelerating enterprise digital transformation from the perspective of policy makers.

“Hacking marketing”: how do firms develop marketers' expertise and practices in a digital era?

Purpose

Digital technologies, digitalised consumers and the torrent of customer data have been transforming marketing practice. In discussing such trends, existing research has either focussed on the skills marketers need or broad-based approaches such as agile methods but has given less consideration to just how such skills or approaches might be developed and used in marketers' day-to-day activities and in the organisation of marketing in the firm. This is what the authors address in this paper.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper adopts an in-depth case study approach to examine an exemplary digital enterprise in transformation of their digital marketing. The insights were gathered from 25 interviews, netnography and document analysis of the case organisation in addition to 10 interviews with independent experts.

Findings

Drawing on practice-oriented approach, the authors show how organisations respond to the emerging trends of digital consumers and big data by taking a ‘hacking marketing’ approach and developing novel marketing expertise at disciplinary boundaries. The authors put forward three sets of practices that enable and shape the hacking marketing approach. These include spanning the expertise boundary, making value measurable and experimenting through which their adaptive, iterative and multidisciplinary work occurs. This explains how managing digital consumers and big data is not within the realm of information technology (IT) functions but marketing and how marketing professionals are changing their practice and moving their disciplinary boundaries.

Practical implications

This study offers practical contributions for firms in terms of identifying new work practices and expertise that marketing specialists need in managing digital platforms, digitalised consumers and big data. This study’s results show that enterprises need to design and implement strong training programmes to prepare their marketing workforce in adopting experimentations of agile approach and data-driven decision making. In addition, Marketing education should be changed so that programmes consider a review of their courses and include the novel marketing models and approaches into their curriculum.

Originality/value

This study contributes to the nascent discussions by unpacking how enterprises can develop new marketing expertise and practices beyond skillsets and how such practices form new hacking marketing approach which addresses the problem of the inability of the conventional marketing approach to show its value within the firm.

Digital transformation: A meta-review and guidelines for future research

The emergence of digital transformation has changed the business landscape for the foreseeable future. As scholars advance their understanding and digital transformation begins to gain maturity, it becomes necessary to develop a synthesis to create solid foundations. To do so, significant steps need to be taken to critically, rigorously, and transparently examine the existing literature. Therefore, this article uses a meta-review with the support of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) Protocol. As a result, we identified six dimensions and seventeen categories related to digital transformation. The organizational, technological, and social dimensions are still pivotal in digital transformation, while two new dimensions (sustainability and smart cities) still need to be explored in the existing literature. The need to deepen knowledge in digital transformation and refine the dimensions found is of paramount importance, as it involves some complexity due to organizational dynamics and the development of new technologies. It was also possible to identify opportunities, challenges, and future directions.

Managing tensions in resilience development: a paradox theory perspective on the role of digital transformation

Purpose

The study aims to identify the central paradoxical tensions existing in developing resilience in organisations. The main thrust of this study is to develop a thorough understanding of diverse conflicting tensions in building resilience and develop the possible strategies to surmount these tensions.

Design/methodology/approach

Using the case study approach, the study applied theory-elaboration strategy as this study is based on well-established literature from both digitalisation and resilience. The study uses the paradox theory lens in a case study to reconcile both theories with contextual idiosyncrasies.

Findings

The paradox theory lens provides perspectives to understand tensions during resilience development and the role of digital transformation in this process. It assesses the potential solutions for surmounting tensions in resilient operations. The mapping of workable solutions with different paradoxes and propositions has been proposed for future empirical research.

Research limitations/implications

The study suggests that practitioners should not consider resilience and sustainability as mutually exclusive; instead, managers must embrace ongoing tensions to bring solutions to address these two essential organisational priorities.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first empirical study that applies paradox theory to understand how an organisation can build resilience while confronting several paradoxes. The study findings support that resilience practices can move in tandem with environmental sustainability goals rather than being usually mutually exclusive.

Hey Leaders, It’s Time to Train the Workforce: Critical Skills in the Digital Workplace

Businesses are confronted with digital challenges and require skilled employees to work effectively in the digital workplace. Drawing on the theoretical background of digital workplace transformation and the conceptual learning framework, we conducted a qualitative study. With the help of a cross-case analysis of nine multinational corporations, we provide a skillset for leaders on how to train the workforce in the digital workplace. The insights showed that an entrepreneurial mindset, digital responsible thinking, digital literacy, transformative skills, personal development skills, communication skills, community management skills, data analytic skills, and web development skills are critical in the digital workplace. These findings contribute to the literature by offering an exploratory understanding of essential skills for the digital workplace. Furthermore, we provide a theoretical foundation for future empirical investigations of cognitive and metacognitive, social-emotional, and practical skills. The study also offers practical implications for businesses and leaders on how to upskill the workforce and what kind of employees to recruit in the future workplace.

Do an Organization’s Digital Transformation and Employees’ Digital Competence Catalyze the Use of Telepresence?

Rapid changes in the external environment are increasing interest in digital transformation. In particular, the recent breakout of infectious diseases such as COVID-19 has required certain companies to restrict physical exchanges among their members. As a result, companies must strive to maintain productivity and performance by supporting business exchange activities through online platforms. A metaverse technology that supports individuals’ exchange activities in a virtual space based on 3D technology has recently attracted attention from companies. However, as previous studies related to the metaverse have focused on strengthening personalized content and services, additional research is needed in order to understand the metaverse’s effects at the organizational level. This study aims to present the conditions for strengthening the motivation to use the metaverse from the perspective of organizations and members who have applied the metaverse in the workplace on a trial basis. In this study, an online questionnaire was conducted targeting workers of organizations with a history of using the metaverse for business, and the hypotheses were tested using 304 valid samples. As a result of the analysis, it was found that telepresence, a characteristic of the metaverse, influences the intention to continue using the metaverse through informativeness, interactivity, and enjoyment. In addition, the shared goal of the organization’s digital transformation moderated the influence relationship between telepresence and an individual’s motivations, and an individual’s digital competence moderated the influence relationship between motivation and the intention of continuous use. This study suggests a digital transformation strategy for an organization in terms of suggesting ways to strengthen the motivations for the use of the metaverse of employees in the organization.

Building an Integrated Digital Transformation System Framework: A Design Science Research, the Case of FedUni

The purpose of this paper is to propose an integrated digital transformation system framework (IDTSF) to help support business leaders and teams in making their products, services, and operations more streamlined and competitive. The framework will help organizations to best meet user/customer needs with minimum waste and time and enables businesses to achieve efficiency compared with island and traditional sequential approaches. The proposed framework can also provide insights to help organizations to avoid common failures when deploying digital transformation initiatives. The paper follows the design science research (DSR) and the information systems design science research (ISDSR) methodologies to develop the IDTSF model and a practical design artifact. The main problems were the initiation, execution, and governance challenges associated with digital transformation. After identifying the problems and the objectives, a relevant IDTSF model was synthesized and tested as a design artifact. The results of the test of the proposed artifact showed its effectiveness and efficiency in facilitating the components of the model in creating a cohesive framework.

Workplace literacy skills—how information and digital literacy affect adoption of digital technology

Purpose

Information and digital literacy have recently received much interest, and they are being viewed as critical strategic organisational resources and skills that employees need to obtain in order to function at their workplaces. Yet, the role of employees' literacy seems to be neglected in current literature. This paper aims to explore the roles that information and digital literacy play on the employees' perception in relation to usefulness and ease of use of digital technologies and consequently their intention to use technology in the practices they perform at the workplace.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper builds a conceptual model with key constructs (information literacy and digital literacy) as new antecedents to the technology acceptance model and aims to establish that information literacy and digital literacy are indirect determinants of employees' intention to use digital technologies at the workplace. The data set used in this paper comprises of 121 respondents and structural equation modelling was used.

Findings

The findings reveal that both information literacy and digital literacy have a direct impact on perceived ease of use of technology but not on the perceive usefulness. The findings also show that both literacies have an indirect impact on the intention to use digital technology at work via attitude towards use.

Practical implications

Managers and decision-makers should pay close attention to the literacy levels of their staff. Because literacies are such an important skillset in the digital age, managers and chief information officers may want to start by identifying which work groups or individuals require literacy training and instruction, and then provide specific and relevant training or literacy interventions to help those who lack sufficient literacy.

Originality/value

This is one of the first studies to consider information literacy and digital literacy as new antecedents of the technology acceptance model at the workplace environment.

Research on Successful Factors and Influencing Mechanism of the Digital Transformation in SMEs

In the era of the digital economy, digital transformation (DT) has become a new approach for firms to gain competitive advantages in a context of intense and dynamic market competition. Companies in almost all industries have undergone or are currently undergoing DT. Due to limited resources and capabilities, the digitalization process of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is relatively slow, so it is critical to ascertain the key factors and paths that affect the success of DT for SMEs to optimize the allocation of resources. However, there is very little research on the DT of SMEs. In response to this literature gap, the purpose of this study is to discover the key factors of the DT in SMEs and explore their interaction mechanisms. From a holistic perspective, this study has identified six key factors from three dimensions of technology, organization, and environment, and based on the resource-based view and resource-dependence theory, constructed an action mechanism model. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data collected from 180 SMEs in China. The results show that technological and environmental factors have a positive impact on organizational capabilities, and then promote the success of DT of SMEs. Organizational capabilities play an intermediary role in the influence of technological and environmental factors on DT. In addition, employee skills positively moderate the relationship between organizational capabilities and the success of DT. This study contributes to the conceptual framework and management implications in the DT field. Our study provides practitioners with profound insights into the enterprise’s DT and suggests that enterprises attach importance to the improvement of organizational capabilities, and use strategy and talents as important resources to promote the success of enterprise DT.

Collaborating with Virtual Assistants in Organizations: Analyzing Social Loafing Tendencies and Responsibility Attribution

Organizations increasingly introduce collaborative technologies in form of virtual assistants (VAs) to save valuable resources, especially when employees are assisted with work-related tasks. However, the effect of VAs on virtual teams and collaboration remains uncertain, particularly whether employees show social loafing (SL) tendencies, i.e., applying less effort for collective tasks compared to working alone. While extant research indicates that VAs collaboratively working in teams exert greater results, less is known about SL in virtual collaboration and how responsibility attribution alters. An online experiment with N = 102 was conducted in which participants were assisted by a VA in solving a task. The results indicate SL tendencies in virtual collaboration with VAs and that participants tend to cede responsibility to the VA. This study makes a first foray and extends the information systems (IS) literature by analyzing SL and responsibility attribution thus updates our knowledge on virtual collaboration with VAs.

Hybrid organizational forms in public sector’s digital transformation: a technology enactment approach

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine how public sector organizations become nimbler while retaining their resilience during digital transformation.

Design/methodology/approach

The study adopts a hermeneutic approach in conducting deep expert interviews with 22 senior executives and managers of multiple organizations. The method blends theory and expert views to study digital transformation in the context of enterprise information management.

Findings

Drawing on technology enactment framework (TEF), this research poses that organizational form is critical in the enactment of technologies in digital transformation. By extending the TEF, the authors claim that organizations are not in pure bureaucratic or network organizational form during digital transformation; instead, they need a hybrid combination in order to support competing strategic needs for nimbleness and resilience simultaneously. The four hybrid organizational forms presented in this model (4R) allow for networks and bureaucracy to coexist, though at different levels depending on the level of resiliency and nimbleness required at each point in the continuous digital transformation journey.

Research limitations/implications

The main theoretical contribution of this research is to extend the TEF to illustrate that the need for coexistence of nimbleness with stability in a digital transformation results in a hybrid of networks and bureaucratic organization forms. This research aims to guide public sector organizations' digital transformation with extended the TEF as a tool for building the required organizational forms to influence the technology enactment to best meet their strategic needs in the digital era.

Practical implications

The results from expert interviews point to the fact that the hybrid organizational forms create a multi-modal organization, extending the understanding of enterprise information management. Depending on the department or business needs, a hybrid organizational form mode would be dominant. This dominance creates a paradox in organizations to handle both resilience and nimbleness. Therefore, the 4R model is provided as a guide to public sector managers and consultants to guide strutting their organization for digital transformation.

Originality/value

The model (4R), the extended TEF, shows that organizations still work towards networks and bureaucracy; however, they are not two distinct concepts anymore; they coexist at different levels in hybrid forms depending on the needs of the organization.