Digital transformation of companies: Proposal of a global theoretical framework for understanding

Abstract

The technological and digital revolution is bringing considerable changes to our daily lives. Digital technology is transforming consumer behavior, interactions and expectations in terms of satisfying their needs. Technology is forcing companies to seek their competitive advantages in a strong, highly evolved, interconnected and complex competitive market. 

In this context, a continuous transformation and adaptation is necessary or even mandatory for the organization in order to maintain its survival, and this by the concretization of its customer relationship to maintain and increase its market share, to have a strong position in front of its suppliers and the competition, to improve its competences and its internal processes and to be vigilant with regard to the new entrants of its sector of activities.

This change, triggered by technology, prompts researchers to rethink and discuss previous models related to organizational change, challenged by the widespread diffusion of digital technologies. On this, the notion of digital transformation is recently addressed in several research works, defined and presented from different angles.

This paper seeks to synthesize the dispersed knowledge about the digital transformation of companies and deduce, from the literature review, a comprehensive theoretical framework for understanding the concept, addressing its explanatory factors, the transformations to be made within the organization in the digital era and the expected results of a digital transformation project.

Also, our proposed theoretical framework emphasizes the need to set up a continuous monitoring of digital transformation project by measuring intermediate and final results, and eventually make the necessary adaptations achieve the foreseeable objectives.

JEL Classification: O33, L2  

Paper type: Theoretical Research