1 Perspectives on management and information technology after digital transformation
Peter Ekman, Peter Dahlin and Christina Keller
DOI: 10.4324/9781003111245-1
Information technology (IT) has had profound effects on people, organisations and society at large, and the solutions it brings have evolved from requiring specialist handling to being accessible to the majority of the population and being used regularly in everyday life. Over the decades, the spotlight has been on different forms of IT, which has developed from e-mail and the worldwide web being novelties at one point in time to the current frontier with artificial intelligence and big data. Views related to the effect of digitalisation on businesses range from a âsilver bullet,â promising revolutionary results, to claims that digitalisation has had very little impact on business. For example, the article âReengineering Work: Donât Automate, Obliterateâ by Michael Hammer, which was published in the Harvard Business Review in 1990, points out that efficient digitalisation is not just about letting IT automate existing routines. Rather, companies should use the capabilities offered by IT to transform their business processes. His article can be seen as an early contribution to the idea of Business Process Reengineering, which emphasises the enabling effects of digitalisation and was adopted by many organisations in the 1990s. Around the turn of the new century and following the financial crisis, many organisations became strongly cost-oriented and resulted in digitalisation being considered primarily as a cost rather than a strategic benefit and source of competitive advantage. For instance, Nicholas Carrâs (2003) article, entitled âIT Doesnât Matter,â also published in the Harvard Business Review, argues that organisations should not seek to be IT leaders; rather, they should invest in already well-established IT solutions and adopt a âfollow, donât lead logic.â
In the past few decades, we have witnessed consolidation of global IT firms, greater reliance on cloud solutions and virtualisation and increased sophistication of technologies being adopted and used in organisations. These changes can be described as the result of digital transformation. Digitalisation can be defined as âa sociotechnical process of applying digitising techniques to broader social and institutional contexts that render digital technologies infrastructuralâ (Tilson et al. 2010: 749). Legner et al. (2017: 301) distinguish between digitalisation and digitisation: âWhile digitization puts emphasis on digital technologies, the term digitalization has been coined to describe the manifold sociotechnical phenomena and processes of adopting and using these technologies in broader individual, organizational, and societal contexts.â Various forms of digitalisation have been steadily implemented since the global recession around the millennium. The importance of digitalisation has been underlined and the process has intensified during the Covid-19 pandemic, as a result of the restrictions on social interaction and travel (Financial Times 2020).
Evidence of digitalisation can be seen almost everywhere, but its long-term effects remain difficult to fully grasp. It is not difficult to see that digitalisation has changed our everyday lives through the provision of new innovative services (Barrett et al. 2015), restructuring of both national and international infrastructures (e.g., the travel and banking industries; Sharma et al. 2020; Worthington and Welch 2011) and the opening up of education systems through massive open online courses (MOOCs; Martin 2012). How we interact with one another has changed due to the use of smartphones and social media (Alaimo et al. 2020), and smart homes are providing new opportunities for how we live and how society is structured (Shin et al. 2018). At the same time, digitalisation has changed the way organisations are structured (Baptista et al. 2020) and how professional activities are performed (Sennett 1999), and has promoted the development of new business models (Kavadias et al. 2016). While the effects of digitalisation on people and their homes are very evident, its effects on organisations can be less visible but are subject of much academic research.
This book is a result of continuous research by and recurrent discussion among researchers active at the intersection of the management and information systems disciplines, who are interested in the effects of digitalisation on management practice and theory. Researchers have always been fascinated by new phenomena and have an ongoing interest in evidence of change. Organisations are in a state of constant flux â including incorporation of various IT â and this constant change needs to be acknowledged (Gaskin et al. 2014). In management-oriented research, cross-sectional studies as well as longitudinal studies are used to create an understanding of the history, the present and the future. The chapters in this edited collection are based on work conducted by over 60 researchers, who are jointly reflecting on and drawing insights from their ongoing research into the integration of management practices with IT, which is both a cause and an effect of digital transformation. Despite some outstanding progress, this transformation is far from complete. Therefore, rather than focusing on the process of digitalisation, our intention, in this book, is to highlight the opportunities and challenges that accompany or follow digital transformation. Regardless of whether digital transformation is seen as an enabler or a cost, its potential value and benefits depend on entrepreneurial and well-managed integration with the organisation and its goals.
The chapters in this book work to condense the researchersâ insights into how digitalisation has changed, and is changing, organisations, their markets, and the society at large. Some chapters discuss what is causing organisations to lag in this development and why some would like to withdraw from the digitalised world. Taken together, the chapters in this book offer a smorgasbord of perspectives on and insights into the management of IT after digital transformation. They cover multiple industries and span across the individual, organisational and societal levels. They show that the digitalised landscape is no longer an unexplored territory but one that presents a variety of experiences, opportunities and challenges for individuals, organisations and societies.
The book is organised into three sections, and the chapters in each section have a common theme. Each chapter is aimed at inspiring managerial thinking, providing insights into digitalisation and its potential transformative effects and suggesting directions for future research. The chapters in this book should be appreciated by professionals searching for a fresh perspective on managerial practices, MBA students working on their capstone projects and graduate students preparing for a career in the frontline of digital transformation. The chapters in this book do not need to be read sequentially; each is written as a stand-alone text. To emphasise the managerial perspective, each chapter concludes with a short takeaway section that summarises the implications.
To start this collection of insightful texts, we invited Alan Brown, Professor in Digital Economy at the University of Exeter, to reflect on the challenges and opportunities organisations face through and after digital transformation. Chapter 2 âDigital transformation: towards a new perspective for large established organisations in a digital ageâ frames the topic in an excellent way and should make the reader well prepared for a continued dive into different perspectives on management and information technology after digital transformation. It is followed by three parts focusing on (1) the transformation of society and markets as a result of digitalisation, (2) managerial and organisational challenges related to digitalisation and (3) framing digitalisation.
1.1 Part 1 â The transformation of society and markets
The section starts with Chapter 3 âManaging digital servitization: a service ecosystem perspective,â by David Sörhammar, BĂ„rd Tronvoll and Christian Kowalkowski. The authors suggest that digitalisation should be seen as taking place in ecosystems, which require firms to manage both weak and strong relationships with other actors. Thus, digitalisation affects value creation among stakeholders, which is best understood from a systemic perspective. Chapter 4 âCaught on the platform or jumping onto the digital train: challenges for industries lagging behind in digitalisationâ is by Peter Ekman, Magnus Berglind and Steven Thompson and discusses the reasons why some industries are lagging in terms of digitalisation. Chapter 5 âDigitalisation for sustainability: conceptualisation, implications and future research directionsâ by Elena Anastasiadou, Linda Alkire and Jimmie Röndell argues that digitalisation and sustainability should be linked in order to achieve the highest potential value and highest market transformation potential. Kevin Walther and David Sörhammar offer a retrospective odyssey through the gaming industry and discuss the close relationship between technological and business model innovations in Chapter 6 âReaching new heights in the cloud: the digital transformation of the video games industry.â Chapters 7â9 suggest that the dominant view of labour in modern markets needs to be updated. Chapter 7 by Christoffer Andersson, Lucia Crevani, Anette Hallin, Caroline Ingvarsson, Chris Ivory, Inti Lammi, Eva Lindell, Irina Popova and Anna Uhlin is entitled âHyper-Taylorism and third-order technologies: making sense of the transformation of work and management in a post-digital era.â Chapter 8 entitled âWhy space is not enough: service innovation and service delivery in senior housingâ is by Petter Ahlström, Göran Lindahl, Markus Fellesson, Börje Bjelke and Fredrik Nilsson and discusses how digitalisation allows seniors to become co-creators of their own well-being. In a similar context, Chapter 9 by Ann Svensson, Linda Bergkvist, Charlotte BĂ€ccman and Susanne Durst, entitled âChallenges in implementing digital assistive technology in municipal healthcareâ concludes Part 1 by discussing digitalisation in the context of healthcare.
1.2 Part 2 â Managerial and organisational challenges
The second section elaborates on the managerial and organisational challenges that emerge after digital transformation. It is introduced by Klas Sundberg, Birger Rapp and Christina Keller in Chapter 10 âModern project management: challenges for the futureâ where they argue about the need for new project management methods that can adapt to a situation of rapid technological change and flexibility. They discuss how traditional and more modern (agile) project management methods can be combined into hybrid methods, as a means to deal with the needs of contemporary digitalisation. Chapter 11 âManaging the paradoxes of digital product innovationâ by Fredrik Svahn and Bendik Bygstad examines how product innovation practices must go hand in hand with digital innovation, which they concede is a difficult task. In Chapter 12 âWhen external reporting goes social: new conditions for transparency and accountability?â Cecilia Gullberg elaborates on how the characteristics of accounting, which, traditionally, have been periodic, holistic and historical, are changing to become continuous, fragmented and forward-looking. These changes are being promoted by use of social media which are having an effect on transparency and accountability. Chapter 13 âRobotic process automation and the accounting professionâs extinction prophecy,â written by Matthias Holmstedt, Fredrik Jeanson and Angelina Sundström, addresses the transformation of the accounting profession as the digital transformation progresses. Chapter 14 âManaging digital employee-driven innovation: the role of middle-level managers and ambidextrous leadershipâ by Izabelle BĂ€ckström and Peter Magnusson analyses the factors for success or failure in the process of integrating idea management systems to deal with employeeâs ideas about new products and services. In Chapter 15, âDigital gamification of organisational functions and emergent management practices,â Edward Gillmore presents the case of gamification whose introduction changed the managerial practices in an organisation. Part 2 concludes with Chapter 16 âLeveraging digital technologies in Enterprise Risk Managementâ by Jason Crawford and Jan Lindvall who argue that, by leveraging digital technologies to enhance risk computation, interpretation and coordination, enterprise risk management can play a valuable business partnering role in the organisations.
1.3 Part 3 â Framing digitalisation
Part 3 includes chapters that discuss different ways to frame digitalisation and its transformative effects. It starts with Chapter 17 âThe end of business intelligence and business analyticsâ by Matthias Holmstedt and Peter Dahlin, who discuss how the concepts of âbusiness intelligenceâ and âbusiness analyticsâ have become obsolete and are limiting organisationsâ creation of value using analytics, after digital transformation. In Chapter 18 ââDeleted Userâ: signalling digital disenchantment in the post-digital society,â Cristina Ghita, Claes ThorĂ©n and Martin Stojanov observe the âr/nosurfâ community and derive some lessons related to how humans might react to the agency challenges raised by digitalisation. Henrik Dellestrand, Olof Lindahl and Jakob Westergren in Chapter 19 âThe role of boundary-spanners in the post-digitalised multinational corporationâ discuss the effects of digitalisation on the role played by individuals or units in multinational corporations that act as boundary-spanners and facilitate knowledge transfer within and beyond the organisation. Chapter 20 âThe effec...