Individual-level impediments to digital transformation: A bibliometric literature review

Abstract

Digital transformation has become an important and well-known phenomenon. It creates opportunities through new digital technologies, but it also puts pressure on organizations to change the working environment. As new technologies provide new opportunities, it also creates resistance among individuals within the organization. We sought to provide a foundation both for future research and for practical implications that would guide organizations and leaders on individual level impediments through the change process with digital transformation. We enlighten this gap, which we analyzed and discussed using a structured literature search conducted in Web of Science. The findings were analyzed using a content analysis and a through literature review. Research related to the digital transformation and change resistance shows an exponentially growing interest among researchers on these concepts. Surprisingly there is very little research that address our research question, resulting in identifying a clear gap. Considering the amount of available research on the two bodies of literature separately, it's particularly concerning that there exists little research on these two concepts jointly, especially on an individual level. A content analysis was conducted to further discuss similarities and discrepancies, before we discussed the findings. Our findings and discussion provided us information of the most important elements for change resistance at an individual level faced during a digital transformation. Six factors were identified in this study based on a very meticulous literature search through a content analysis of our 20 core articles. The findings indicate a strong focus on management, in the transformation process, and their importance for success. This was surprising, since the articles didn't explicitly focus on the individuals in terms of employees, but rather the managers influence over the employees. Beyond that, the other topics addressed the most were beliefs and mindsets, preparedness and strategy framework, culture, competencies and communication. All of these factors will affect the resistance individuals experience, caused by the change process of digital transformation. This is further discussed in the paper, as well as to how this can assist organizations and practitioners with having a more agile digital transformation.