Unpacking the Difference Between Digital Transformation and IT-Enabled Organizational Transformation

While digital transformation offers a number of opportunities for today’s organizations, information systems scholars and practitioners struggle to grasp what digital transformation really is, particularly how it differs from the well-established concept of information technology (IT)-enabled organizational transformation. By integrating literature from organization science and information systems research with two longitudinal case studies – one on digital transformation, the other on IT-enabled organizational transformation – we develop an empirically grounded conceptualization that sets these two phenomena apart. We find that there are two distinctive differences: (a) digital transformation activities leverage digital technology in (re)defining an organization’s value proposition, while IT-enabled organizational transformation activities leverage digital technology in supporting the value proposition and (b) digital transformation involves a new organizational identity compared with IT-enabled organizational transformation that enhances an existing organizational identity. We synthesize these arguments in a process model to distinguish the different types of transformations and propose directions for future research.

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