Everything Is IT, but IT Is Not Everything – What Incumbents Do to Manage Their Digital Transformation Towards Continuous Change

Driven by the ongoing emergence of digital technologies, today’s business environment is changing at tremendous speed. Thus, incumbents have initiated digital transformation programs to cope with the associated challenges. While transformation programs are typically associated with punctuated change, emerging research conceptualizes digital transformation as an ongoing process that demands new approaches to organizational change. Hitherto, we lack insights on how organizations prepare themselves for such continuous change. Thus, we conduct an explorative interview study with 29 interview partners that provide insights from different roles, organizations, and industries. Thereby, we gain an overview of organizations’ digital transformation realities and challenges. We contribute to the existing literature on digital transformation by elucidating the individual foci and interdependencies of digital, agile, and cultural transformation. Further, we shed light on additional elements that foster continuous change, i.e., organizational culture, purpose, vision, and values in the context of digital transformation