Digital transformation is one of the central challenges organisations face today. It is not merely about introducing new digital technologies, but about complex, multi-layered and far-reaching organisational change processes.
This publication brings together practice-oriented insights into digital change in organisations from four interdisciplinary research projects conducted at the Bavarian Research Institute for Digital Transformation (bidt). The contributions address different key challenges of digital transformation and deepen the understanding of the organisational dynamics and complex interdependencies that shape digital change. The publication is explicitly aimed at practitioners and provides concrete, practice-oriented guidance for the evidence-based and responsible shaping of digital transformation processes in organisations.
Insights from Current bidt Research
The publication comprises contributions from four interdisciplinary bidt research projects that translate current empirical research findings into concrete, practice-relevant insights. The projects approach digital change from two distinct yet complementary perspectives: on the one hand, they focus on the processual and far-reaching character of digital change in organisations and its implications; on the other hand, they address concrete managing issues in digital work settings.
Together, these contributions shed light on different yet interconnected layers of digital change and demonstrate how research-based knowledge can support meaningful digital change in organisations.
Considering the organisational identity in digital transformation
The first contribution explores the relationship between digital transformation and organisational identity. It highlights the central role of organisations’ legacy and self-understanding in digital transformation processes and shows how collective identity work can contribute to more can enable more grounded and sustainable change.
To the research project
Transforming digitally: How digital technologies support change management
The second contribution sheds light on how digital innovations for organisational change (DIOCs) reshape existing practices and challenge established approaches to change management and depend on employees’ interpretations for their success. It offers guidance on aligning DIOCs with organisational goals, managerial values and employee perspectives to foster more effective and inclusive change processes.
To the research project
The dark side of digital leadership
Focusing on remote and hybrid work environments, this contribution offers practical insights into how to reduce destructive leadership behaviour, specifically exploitative leadership actions. It emphasises the importance of critically reflecting on organisational culture and guidelines, strengthening leaders’ digital competencies, and fostering a robust feedback culture across physically dispersed work settings.
To the research project
Digital collaboration platforms as enablers of organisational knowledge exchange
The third contribution examines the use of enterprise collaboration platforms and shows how digital tools can be implemented and used to support knowledge exchange through participation, diversity and accessibility. It offers practical suggestions for feedback systems, user-centred design and strategic governance of digital infrastructures.
To the research project
Facets of Digital Change in Organisations: A Multi-Stakeholder Perspective
While each contribution highlights a specific facet of digital change, the publication as a whole offers broad insights into the complex dynamics of digital transformation processes. Digital change rarely follows a linear or uniform path but unfolds simultaneously across multiple levels – strategic, operational, individual and technical – – and often in asymmetric or contradictory ways. Successfully navigating digital change therefore depends not only on new tools or strategies but on a nuanced understanding of how change manifests differently across various domains in an organisation. Recognising this, all contributions follow a shared analytical approach. Each examines the respective phenomenon from different yet interconnected stakeholder perspectives and derives targeted implications for practice.
The Organisational Perspective
How digital change unfolds depends to a large extent on how digital interventions are interpreted, adopted and adapted within historically grown structures, cultures and ways of working. The organisational perspective therefore focuses on overarching structural, cultural and institutional conditions. It concerns the role of legacy systems, power dynamics shape and are shaped by digital initiatives. Questions arise around governance, participation, inclusivity and alignment between the imagined digital future and an organisation’s historically grown self-understanding. The resulting practice-oriented implications primarily address board members, specialists in strategic planning and organisational development, as well as employee representatives. They provide insights on how organisations can actively reflect on their strategic direction, anchor transformation processes in existing values and create enabling conditions for change that are more than skin-deep.
The Management Perspective
The management perspective highlights the pivotal role of managers in digital change – particularly middle managers, team leads and change agents. They shape digital transformation by facilitating, moderating and legitimising change processes within teams and departments. Digital change is thus less about enforcing new rules and more about navigating tensions, enabling dialogue and providing orientation in times of uncertainty. Managers must interpret evolving demands, translate them into meaningful guidance and act as credible change facilitators. The practice-oriented insights show how leadership roles and expectations are shifting in digital contexts and which competencies are required, including digital literacy, reflexivity and emotional intelligence. They also illustrate how leaders can foster participation, shape communication and credibly support change.
The Employee Perspective
From the perspective of employees, digital change is not an abstract strategic agenda but a lived everyday experience. For staff at all levels, including informal leaders and employee representatives, digital change often brings uncertainty, increased complexity or shifts in role identity. At the same time, change becomes real only when when individuals experience, enact and embody it and embed in everyday work practices.
The employee perspective focuses on the micro-level of digital change and highlights the emotional, practical and social dimensions of transformation. It underscores the importance of transparent communication, accessible support formats and participatory approaches that foster ownership rather than mere compliance.
The Technology Perspective
The technology perspective addresses all those involved in designing, implementing and governing digital tools in organisations, from IT and digitalisation leads to developers, UX designers and digitalisation teams. It makes clear that technology is not neutral: design decisions shape how work is organised and how collaboration takes place. Tools, platforms and interfaces structure organisational behaviour and can either support or hinder the goals of digital change. This perspective encourages practitioners to critically reflect on affordances, user experience and data practices, and to consider technology development not as a separate domain, but as an integral part of organisational and cultural change.
Rather than offering a universal blueprint, the multi-stakeholder perspective applied in this publication provides a valuable orientation for understanding the complex and entangled dynamics and interdependencies of digital transformation processes. Building on empirical research findings, the publication offers practical-oriented impulses for nuanced reflection and evidence-based decision-making, and supports practitioners in understanding the complexities of digital transformation and in shaping digital change collectively and credibly.
