Description
Confronted with the imperatives of an increasingly digital world, organizations are challenged to maintain the exploitation of existing revenue sources while simultaneously exploring novel paths for a digital future. One option to manage this organizational ambidexterity and to foster innovation activities within the companies is to implement digital units. However, although the introduction of digital units has increasingly become common practice for organizations, a high uncertainty about the nature of such units remains. Therefore, we develop a taxonomy to characterize digital units by building on pertinent literature in the fields of digital transformation, organizational ambidexterity, and organizational design. In combination with employing a qualitative-empirical research approach, we contribute to existing literature by offering an initial characterization of digital units and a first empirical application of our taxonomy. We also provide descriptive findings on digital units in practice and offer insights for companies that consider to implement such specific units.
Characterizing Approaches to Digital Transformation: Development of a Taxonomy of Digital Units
Confronted with the imperatives of an increasingly digital world, organizations are challenged to maintain the exploitation of existing revenue sources while simultaneously exploring novel paths for a digital future. One option to manage this organizational ambidexterity and to foster innovation activities within the companies is to implement digital units. However, although the introduction of digital units has increasingly become common practice for organizations, a high uncertainty about the nature of such units remains. Therefore, we develop a taxonomy to characterize digital units by building on pertinent literature in the fields of digital transformation, organizational ambidexterity, and organizational design. In combination with employing a qualitative-empirical research approach, we contribute to existing literature by offering an initial characterization of digital units and a first empirical application of our taxonomy. We also provide descriptive findings on digital units in practice and offer insights for companies that consider to implement such specific units.