Cultural Preparation for Digital Transformation of Industrial Organizations: A Multi-case Exploration of Socio-technical Systems

Abstract

Digital technology adoption is not new; however, digital transformation in industrial organization is recognized as a contemporary phenomenon. Extant literature, however, offers limited guidance on how the socio-technical system could culturally evolve during the digital transformation. Our limited research focused on the exploration of cultural preparedness in traditional large-scale organization with global footprint. With multi-case study research design, we collected data from three industrial organizations, and perform data analysis with grounded theory approach. Our results are a collected set of values, assumptions, and artifacts pertinent to the cultural preparedness of industrial organizations.

Structural challenges to adopt digital transformation in industrial organizations: A multiple case study

“…Attaining such characteristics require industrial organizations to move from mechanistic structures towards organic ones, which is very critical for DT. Most of the recent DT researchers laid stress on organizational transformation, which include culture, roles, business models, business operations, product and services (Butt, Imran, Kantola, & Helo, 2021;Imran et al, 2021;Vial, 2019), however, organizational structures remain one of most important factors in attaining successful DT. Some recent studies highlighted barriers to DT for organizations, such as unprepared organizations (Gupta, 2018) poor communication, rigid and highly formalized structures (Smet, Lurie, & George, 2018), however, the challenges faced by industrial organizations in modifying their structures for DT remained understudy.…”