Impact of the Pandemic on the Barriers to the Digital Transformation in Higher Education : Comparing Pre- and Intra-Covid-19 Perceptions of Management Students

The rise of digital technologies is a macro trend, forcing organizations to transform digitally. This so-called digital transformation (DT) is affecting the field of higher education, too. Higher education institutions (HEI) digitalize internal processes and offer digitally-enabled education services. Different types of barriers are challenging a successful DT and need to be mastered. Our study follows a longitudinal research design by surveying different student cohorts in the same courses. Before the pandemic, we identified the barriers to DT and transferred them into a research model. Pre-pandemic, we surveyed the influence of barriers perceived by management students on the DT process of their HEI. Taking the pandemic as a solid external driver on DT, we examined students’ intra-pandemic perception in the same courses as the pre-pandemic analysis. With pre-pandemic data, the projection explains over 50% of the adjustment problems of the DT process. Based on intra-pandemic data, the explanation decreases to 45%. Hypothetically, we expected a better explanation degree as an impact of the pandemic. Interestingly, results indicate that intra-pandemic perceptions got more complex and, therefore, less significant.