Everything is IT, but IT is not everything

Driven by the ongoing emergence of digitaltechnologies, today's business environment is changing at tremendous speed. Thus, incumbents have initiated #digitaltransformation programs to cope with the associated challenges. While transformation programs are typically associated with punctuated change, emerging research conceptualizes digital transformation as an ongoing process that demands new approaches to organizational change. Hitherto, we lack insights on how organizations prepare themselves for such continuouschange.

Thus, we conducted an explorative interview study with 29 interview partners that provide insights from different roles, organizations, and industries. Thereby, we gained an overview of organizations' digital transformation realities and challenges. We contribute to the existing literature on digital transformation by elucidating the individual foci and interdependencies of digital, agile, and cultural transformation. Further, we shed light on additional elements that foster continuous change, i.e., organizational culture, purpose, vision, and values in the context of digital transformation.

Please read more about our research in our paper “Everything Is IT, but IT Is Not Everything – How Organizations Manage Their Digital Transformation Towards Continuous Change” which has been accepted for presentation at the 42nd International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS 2021) that takes place from December 12 to 15 in Austin, Texas.