Assessing the factors affecting individual’s perceptions of digital transformation

Abstract

Individuals’ role in the success of digital transformations is largely overlooked, which can be claimed to be one of the main reasons why digital transformations tend to fail. Individuals’ support for the change is essential, because if individual behavior does not change, there factually is no organizational change. In previous literature, perceptions and attitudes toward change are found to be great predictors of individual behavior during change processes. Therefore, understanding what factors affect individual’s perceptions of digital transformation and identifying how the organization can impact the perceptions and attitudes through the affecting factors is central for successful digital transformations. Both digital transformations and change management are widely researched topics, but many papers give a more generalized guideline on how to lead a change without taking into account the individual change targets that make the context of each change unique. To fill in that gap, this thesis is focusing on how the individual change targets affect the way the change should be led.

The aim of this thesis is to find ways in which the organization can impact individuals’ perceptions and attitudes to increase their support for digital transformation. This problem is studied with qualitative research methods, looking into a case organization that is planning to implement a new service management system in their HR unit. The empirical data includes eight semi-structured interviews with HR professionals that are closely affected by the upcoming digital transformation. The collected data is analyzed using the framework of thematic analysis to identify patterns within the data that construct the findings, which are then compared and combined with former research to provide answers to the research questions.

The individual’s perceptions found in this study can be divided into four main themes: 1) the perceptions of the current state and need for change, 2) the perceived benefits of the change, 3) the perceived challenges and risks of change, and 4) change management and perceived solutions for the identified challenges. This study suggests that these perceptions and the overall attitudes toward change are affected by organizational factors such as previous experiences of change, trust in leaders, communication, participation, facilitative leadership, and training, which supports the existing theories of managing successful digital transformations. Additionally, some implications were found that the change targets’ professionalism in change management and the capabilities of the technology can also impact individuals’ perceptions of the change and thus affect their level of support.