Literature reviewDigital technologies, from a societal view, have become incorporated in dailyroutines, influencing the way we work, communicate and interact with others(Piccinini, Hanelt, Gregory and Kolbe, 2015). Technologies have become anincreasingly important aspect of businesses to help deliver success (Warner andWäger, 2019), and resulted in fundamental shifts to business infrastructure andstrategy (Bharadwaj, El Sawy, Pavlou … Continue reading “Literature review | My Assignment Tutor”
Literature reviewDigital technologies, from a societal view, have become incorporated in dailyroutines, influencing the way we work, communicate and interact with others(Piccinini, Hanelt, Gregory and Kolbe, 2015). Technologies have become anincreasingly important aspect of businesses to help deliver success (Warner andWäger, 2019), and resulted in fundamental shifts to business infrastructure andstrategy (Bharadwaj, El Sawy, Pavlou and Venkatraman, 2013). However, to findcreative ways to use digital technology, organisations must embrace “strategies thatembrace digital transformation and drive better operational performance” (Hess,Matt, Benlian and Wiesboeck, 2016:123).2.1 Digital TransformationDigital Transformation (DT) has become an increasingly important aspect ofbusiness strategy (Bharadwaj, El Sawy, Pavlou and Venkatraman, 2013),organisation processes and culture (Vial, 2019). DT can be defined as “anevolutionary process that leverages digital capabilities and technologies to enablebusiness models, operational processes and customer experiences to create value”(Morakanyane, Grace and O’Reilly, 2018). Whilst the main premise of DT is thebusiness adoption of relevant technologies, Rogers (2016) argues that the processshould necessarily focus on business strategy and how DT can be used in customerrelationship management (CRM). Therefore, strategic alignment between IT andbroader business strategies is necessary (Bharadwaj et al., 2013) and offers aunified understanding of how to guide digital transformation processes (Brown andBrown, 2019).2.2 Implications of pandemicThe global outbreak of coronavirus (COVID-19) has resulted in national lockdowns,new policies and restrictions across borders (SDG, 2020). At the time of writing thisresearch proposal, there have been 63 million confirmed cases and over 1.46Mdeaths worldwide with more than 58 thousand deaths in the UK, the 5th highestnumber of worldwide deaths (Cul, 2020). From an organisational perspective, thepandemic has disrupted supply chains across the world have been affected, with ananticipated global recession in the near future (Nicola et al., 2020). Researchershave labelled COVID-19 a black swan event (Ren, 2020) and likened this to theeconomic impact of World War Two (Giles and Parker, 2020). With this in mind, it’sclear to see that the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to have a significant impact onbusiness. The pandemic has forced businesses to adapt to environmentalconditions, such as the adoption of technologies to support remote working(Spataro, 2020). However, a McKinsey consumer sentiment survey (2020) hassuggested that the adoption of digital technologies in specific industries would bemaintained after COVID-19, particularly in services such as retail shopping, onlinefitness, and communication (including video chat and video conferencing). It is cleartherefore that businesses need to strategically adapt to technologies, andpermanently adopt digital transformation solutions.2.3 Dynamic capabilitiesThis research will use the dynamic capability approach to investigate the processesthat a business needs to consider when undergoing digital transformation. DynamicCapabilities (DC) is an extension of the resource-based view (RBV) of anorganisation (Schilke, Hu and Helfat, 2018) which suggests that businesses not onlychange their resources and routines, but their products and services to survive inchanging environments (Eisenhardt & Martin, 2000). Therefore dynamic capabilitiesis defined as “the capacity of an organisation to purposefully create, extend ormodify its resource base” (Helfat et al., 2007, p. 4). Teece (2007; 2014) suggestedthat dynamic capabilities can be broken into three broad groups, consisting ofsensing, seizing and transforming capabilities. Sensing allows an organisation tounderstand what changes are needed and how to adapt the business to make senseof the opportunities that exist. (Yeow, Soh and Hansen, 2018). Seizing capabilitiesallows organisations to understand trends that are causing disruption identified inthe sensing phase, to create value for customers (Teece, 2014). Finally,transforming capabilities focusses on “asset alignment, co-alignment, realignment,and redeployment” (Teece, 2007, p. 1336) and is concerned with the execution ofthat particular trend/opportunity to understand the full potential this strategicchange can bring (Haarhaus and Liening, 2020). Transforming capabilities caninclude changing routines, restructuring departments, managing co-specialisedassets, and putting in place governance and knowledge development structures(Yeow, Soh and Hansen, 2018). The transforming phase is important in the processof aligning towards the business strategy as it helps to reconfigure existingresources and align them to the new strategy, which can also include building newresources or introduce new resources (Yeow, Soh and Hansen, 2018).2.4 Conceptual FrameworkDigital transformation processes the business needs to consider toaddress the impact caused by the COVID-19 pandemic
