Research streams on digital transformation from a holistic business perspective: a systematic literature review and citation network analysis

Abstract

Digital transformation (DT) has become a buzzword, triggering different disciplines in research and influencing practice, which leads to independent research streams. Scholars investigate the antecedents, contingencies, and consequences of these disruptive technologies by examining the use of single technologies or of digitization, in general. Approaches are often very specialized and restricted to their domains. Thus, the immense breadth of technologies and their possible applications conditions a fragmentation of research, impeding a holistic view. With this systematic literature review, we aim to fill this gap in providing an overview of the different disciplines of DT research from a holistic business perspective. We identified the major research streams and clustered them with co-citation network analysis in nine main areas. Our research shows the main fields of interest in digital transformation research, overlaps of the research areas and fields that are still underrepresented. Within the business research areas, we identified three dominant areas in literature: finance, marketing, and innovation management. However, research streams also arise in terms of single branches like manufacturing or tourism. This study highlights these diverse research streams with the aim of deepening the understanding of digital transformation in research. Yet, research on DT still lacks in the areas of accounting, human resource management, and sustainability. The findings were distilled into a framework of the nine main areas for assisting the implications on potential research gaps on DT from a business perspective.

Introduction to the Minitrack on Making Digital Transformation Real

“…Reis, Amorim, Melão, and Matos [3] found a significant rise in publications on digital transformation after 2014. The same patterns are found in other literature reviews of the field [4]. It shows that digital transformation is a relatively new research topic.…”

Digital data and management accounting: why we need to rethink research methods

“…It is now the case that we live in an era almost all human activity including organisational life can be recorded digitally (Alvarez 2016;Nagle 2017). The major mechanisms driving digitalisation today include digital technology innovations such as embedded internet of things devices, cloud computing, digitised supply chains and enterprise ecosystems and social media platforms among others (Blazquez and Domenech 2018;Hausberg et al 2019). They give rise to data growth through management information systems processes and the proliferation of social networks, blogs, political discourse, company announcements, digital journalism, mobile messaging, home entertainment, online gaming, online financial services, online shopping, social advertising, and social commerce among others (Bhimani 2020;Chang et al 2014).…”

Digital transformation: conceptual framework

“…Literature review to investigate the concept of digital transformation was done by various researchers (Nwaiwu, 2018;Reis, Amorim, Melão, & Matos, 2018;Morakanyane, Grace, & O'Reilly, 2017;Hausberg et al, 2018;Henriette, Feki, & Boughzala, 2015). The main points differing the current research from the previous ones are that the authors used most recent publications for data collection, and also that the concept was viewed from the business sectors representatives, who were engaged in the process of DT implementation.…”