How Digital Business Strategy Shapes Task Complexity in Datafication of Knowledge Work

Abstract

Traditionally, knowledge workers delivered value from complex job tasks that were determined by the amount of information they cognitively processed. In organizations practicing digital business strategies, information handling is progressively replaced by data processed for algorithmic decision support. When organizational processes are becoming increasingly data-driven, shifts in the central task component of complexity are expected. In this paper, we draw on a quantitative survey of 150 knowledge-intensive organizations in the U.S., and find that knowledge workers are perceiving increased complexity in their daily tasks, now shaped by the digital work environment. Executing a digital business strategy increases the IT dependency of business processes and emphasizes data as determinant of increased task complexity. Our research contributes to explain consequences of datafication for individual job tasks in knowledge work when organizations strategically strive to gain value from digital technologies and provides building blocks for future job design when designing for digital.

A Framework of AI Strategy

“…In the current scientific discussion, we find several questions left unanswered, such as how the complementarity of the social and the technical as fundamental convention of sociotechnical systems develops in a digital first world. Given the organizational context of the knowledge workplace (Wunderlich & Fischer, 2022), one discussion centers around decision making in a digital first setting indicating questions such as how decisions are made, on which information basis or experience they are taken, as well as by whom, where, and when. Another discussion centers around how to enable variety, continuous learning opportunities, and meaningfulness.…”

“…Sufficient variety. As variety is decreasing due to datafication, work is also experienced as increasingly complex due to automation (Wunderlich & Fischer, 2022). Finding a fitting balance between variety to grow competencies and skills, and the straining cognitive consequences of handling work that are not automated is important.…”