You'll Be Surprised - Digital Business Strategy as Driver of Organizational Innovativeness

Abstract

Abstract

Datafication of Knowledge Work: A Framework and Research Agenda

“…Knowledge-intensive organizations are facing substantial changes in digital infrastructure, since computing power, lower cost for data storage, and connectivity based on a faster and wider internet change its business environment [48]. Whereas organizational culture such as mindfulness were verified to improve the assimilation of IT innovations in business processes of incumbent firms [50], the recent developments of digital infrastructure reshape the entire business strategy and business models [45]: Global connectivity creates digital ecosystems of highly intertwined, co-creating customers and suppliers, resulting in platform businesses, where every (trans)action is reflected, tracked, and stored in (big) data [21]. The developments are not limited to creating value for customers by producing more individualized services, automated decision-making or meta-human systems also generate socio-technical developments that shift data at the center of attention [28].…”

How Digital Business Strategy Shapes Task Complexity in Datafication of Knowledge Work

“…We measured the concept of DBS strictly in line with its original, theoretically developed postulation [4,38] which allows us to understand how this organizational framework determines the job tasks of knowledge workers. While we know that employees become more involved with higher levels of implemented DBS [18,19], our sample demonstrates how the highly qualified group of knowledge workers perceives such shifts towards digital value creation from their perspective. KW requires reconciliation with business strategy due to its high degrees of individual work autonomy [17].…”

“…Companies can expect positive effects if a large proportion of the workforce is reached through this internal, resource configuring function, especially when involving colleagues fulfilling tasks with higher strategic relevance, such as managers and knowledge workers [17]. Especially in digital work environments, employees' awareness of their company's goals gains increased importance for coordinated actions due to intense horizontal and decentralized collaboration and remote work [18,19]. The fusion of the formerly separate concepts of a business and a separate IT strategy manifests the incremental value IT is granted for the entire organization when the functional strategy is promoted into a corporate strategy.…”

It Depends on the Size: How Firm Strategic Emphasis on Digital Transformation Predicts Market Capitalization

“…Additionally, we controlled for firm's R&D expenditures in order to address the magnitude of the required financial resources for the ongoing digital transformation projects [50,51], firm performance as well as industry performance as these factors could both influence firm strategic emphasis on digital transformation and market capitalization [42,52]. We measured R&D expenditures as the total amount of firm's R&D expenses in Euro divided by the number of employees [52].…”

“…Although we relied on complete 1,203 firm-year observations for our analysis, the reduced sample size might limit the generalizability of our results to those firms, which did not disclose their R&D expenditures. Further, while we controlled for R&D expenditures to address the magnitude of the required financial resources for digital transformation [50,51], due to the poor data availability for the HDAX firms [34,36,37], we were not able to control for other aspects, which might be related to digital business strategy and its risk, such as IT investments [65]. Therefore, future research may address this limitation by repeating the study using another sample with a better data availability, and in doing so, include additional control variables such as IT investments.…”