Practice inspired critical success factors for “doing” digital transformation

Purpose: The pace of Digital Transformation (DT) is accelerating within organizations, and this has blossomed into a commentary around what we refer to as “doing” DT. Despite this trend, it is hard to find a collection of Critical Success Factors (CSFs) for DT, from either the academic literature or trade press. For the purposes of this research, we define DT as the strategic use of emergent and emerging technologies to make an organization more customer-focused, innovative and efficient, through optimizing processes, data and people, disrupting business and operational models to deliver value to all stakeholders. Therefore, the objective of this theory-building research is to explore the CSFs for DT in a pre-digital organization. Design/methodology/approach: For the purposes of this theory-building research we take inspiration from features of the Gioia Methodology. Therefore, we pose the following research question: What are the CSFs for DT that impact positively on the outcome of a DT initiative within a pre-digital organization? To answer this question, we code (following an inductive open, axial and selective coding approach) the stories of 16 key informants (DT leaders). We also survey a further 30 DT leaders to evaluate the importance of our findings (the degree to which each of our nine CSFs for DT are deemed “essential”). Findings: We present nine CFSs for DT in a pre-digital organization as a conceptual model. We also evaluate these CSFs for DT, and this evaluation reveals that seven of our CSFs for DT are deemed essential. Furthermore, our evaluation also reveals three interesting patterns, one of which highlights the importance of three specific CSFs that impact on “Culture Change” when “doing” DT in a pre-digital organization. Originality/value: This paper is unique in its approach and the CSFs presented can sharpen the DT focus of academia and practice. Our contribution advances the first comprehensive conceptualization of the “essential” CSFs for DT in a pre-digital organization, thereby strengthening the relevance for practitioners striving for the best possible DT initiative outcome.