A Taxonomy of Barriers to Digital Transformation

Companies expect significant long-term gains in efficiency andproductivity through digital transformation (DT). New ways of combiningproducts, processes, and data-driven services, as well as new business modelsemerge. However, the rapid development of the DT leads to constraints regardingits realization. Barriers hinder companies to realize possible advantages out ofDT. If firms promptly recognize potential barriers, they can reflect upon thesechallenges and can take well-coordinated countermeasures. Social, technical andsocio-technical problems address different stakeholders and ask for specificsolutions. Therefore, our study aims at developing a taxonomy for barriers to DTto enable researchers and practitioners to identify and classify existing barriers.For deriving the dimensions and characteristics, we collected data by conducting46 semi-structured interviews with experts and enriched these by looking at theliterature on DT barriers