Rerouting Digital Transformations - Six Cases in the Airline Industry

The purpose of this study is to understand how and why success criteria evolve in the course of a digital transformation initiative. Evolving success criteria can cloud planning processes and lead to post-hoc rationalizations, an observation that is often made but the underlying processes are hardly researched. This exploratory study does so by employing a qualitative approach with six embedded case studies of different digital transformation initiatives (DTIs) within a large European airline company. Our findings show how traditional business case approval practices, the degree of involvement of different stakeholders -each using different metrics-, the closeness in collaboration between these stakeholders and lastly the degree to which key-users embrace the digital solution during a DTI, all contribute to evolving success criteria. A discussion of the findings and limitations, implications for practice and suggestions for future research conclude the article.