Adopting an Ecosystem Approach to Digitalization-driven Organizational Change ? Actionable Knowledge from a Collaborative Project

Abstract

A vibrant debate has emerged on the opportunities of digitalization for ‘humanizing’ work versus substitution or deskilling effects. Recognizing the processes of designing digitalized organizations as crucial for predicting the outcome of digitalization on workers and labor, extant research has developed an evolutionary ecosystem socio-technical (STS) perspective aimed at designing more human organizations in light of digital transformation. In this study we build upon the STS ecosystem analytical framework by Winby and Mohrman (2018), aiming to explore how the STS design principles, as proposed by said authors, are applied in three big manufacturing companies, in light of digitalization. Data collected through qualitative techniques has been analyzed abductively. Findings provide a detailed overview of how the STS ecosystem design principles are operationalized, and shed novel light on applied design methods, such as ‘agile’ and ‘design thinking’, able to support interconnection among systems, in a never-ending and iterative process. This study extends the existing ecosystem STS organization design conceptual model by exploring ‘how’ we change, ‘who’ the change is for, while also investigating ‘what’ this means for the hitherto conceptualized STS work-system. Implication for management practice and ODC scholarship are also discussed.

Clarifying the Business Model Construct: A Theory-Driven Review through the Lenses of Ecosystem and Open System

“…One primary challenge confronting firms today is the development of adaptive business models capable of navigating the uncertainties within intricate, interconnected markets (Ritter and Lettl 2018;Shaba et al 2023;Vatankhah et al 2023). According to the 2023 AlixPartners Disruption Index Report, 98% of the 3,000 surveyed business leaders recognized the need to reshape their business models within the next three years, yet 85% struggled to determine where to start their transformation (Freakley 2022).…”