TY - CHAP

T1 - Improvising Digital Transformation

T2 - Americas Conference on Information Systems - AMCIS 2019

AU - Zimmer, Markus Philipp

N1 - Conference code: 25

PY - 2019/7

Y1 - 2019/7

N2 - Digitalization disrupts markets leaving organizations with unprecedented challenges in increasingly turbulent business environments. To cope, organizations engage in their digital transformations. Crafting digital transformation strategies, they seek to exploit digital technologies to leverage new business opportunities. In management circles, crafting such digital transformation strategies is portrayed as an act of advanced planning and subsequent execution. In practice, however, strategy making in an unprecedented situation coined by a turbulent business environment, rather resembles the situational, intuitive practice of improvisation. Building on an ethnographic study in a large German car manufacturer (Car Inc.) undergoing its digital transformation, we report how Car Inc.’s digital transformation strategy unfolds in acts of organizational improvisation. Car Inc.’s digital transformation strategy is not planned and executed top-down but unfolds bottom-up coordinated by a digital unit purposefully organizing a sequence of multiple acts of organizational improvisation guided by a multi-layered minimal structure.

AB - Digitalization disrupts markets leaving organizations with unprecedented challenges in increasingly turbulent business environments. To cope, organizations engage in their digital transformations. Crafting digital transformation strategies, they seek to exploit digital technologies to leverage new business opportunities. In management circles, crafting such digital transformation strategies is portrayed as an act of advanced planning and subsequent execution. In practice, however, strategy making in an unprecedented situation coined by a turbulent business environment, rather resembles the situational, intuitive practice of improvisation. Building on an ethnographic study in a large German car manufacturer (Car Inc.) undergoing its digital transformation, we report how Car Inc.’s digital transformation strategy unfolds in acts of organizational improvisation. Car Inc.’s digital transformation strategy is not planned and executed top-down but unfolds bottom-up coordinated by a digital unit purposefully organizing a sequence of multiple acts of organizational improvisation guided by a multi-layered minimal structure.

KW - Business informatics

KW - Digital Transformation

KW - Digital Transformation Strategy

KW - Improvisation

UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/50511488-3a1d-31b5-bae5-fb98ab2240b1/

M3 - Article in conference proceedings

T3 - Proceedings of the Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS)

BT - Americas Conference on Information Systems - AMCIS 2019

A2 - Rodriguez-Abitia, Guillermo

A2 - Ferran, Carlos

A2 - Santana, Martin

A2 - Montealegre, Ramiro

PB - AIS eLibrary

Y2 - 15 August 2019 through 17 August 2019

ER -