A Knowledge-Based Perspective on Digital Transformation

Digital transformation has been disrupting how business should be operated almost in all industries. There is a rich literature on how disruptions happen in organizations' structures, business models, and value proposition, however, limited insight into the role of knowledge in such disruptions has been provided. Organizations in digital transformation face a conundrum that they are likely to disrupt the foundational knowledge on which their organization structure and processes are built, because the digital transformation they are pursuing is also transforming knowledge profoundly. Thus, it is crucial to understand how digital transformation disrupts knowledge inside organizations and how organizations deal with this process. In an extensive single case study of the digital transformation process of a media company, we empirically explore the changing patterns of knowledge, namely the organizational epistemic stances, that were continuously disrupted by the development process of digital transformation. We identify four phases of epistemic stance that the organization went through in their digital transformation projects: inertial phase, digital-centric phase, retrospective phase, and integrated phase. This study contributes a process model illustrating the dynamic process of organizational epistemic stances during the whole digital transformation process. Through the knowledge-based perspective, this study also extends the understanding of how digital transformation changes organizations' knowledge-generating inherently underneath specific actions and practices.