The Evolving Role of IT Departments in Digital Transformation

Abstract

In the digital era, organizations are increasingly tasked with creating and utilizing new content, applications, and/or services through the use of advanced information and communication technologies (ICT) to sustain a competitive advantage. Indeed, sustainability is now an embedded and overarching feature of organizations’ strategic planning. Research has shown that information technology (IT) departments are vital to organizations’ digital transformation. However, the role of IT departments in non-ICT-oriented organizations undergoing digital transformation has yet to be explored. Our study reveals that although the IT departments of non-ICT-oriented organizations play an important and proactive role in the early stages of organizational transformation and a dominant role in developing ICT capabilities, they will be unable to assume a leadership role within the organizations after transformation is complete.

Adopting a digital transformation strategy to enhance business network commons regeneration: an explorative case study

“…Moreover, Gupta et al (2020a) study the relationship between Cloud ERP and the sustainable performance of small, medium and large companies in Northern India. In addition, Hsu et al (2018) focus on non-ICT-oriented organizations and reveal that ICT applications are necessary for enabling and supporting sustainability practices and for enhancing the position of the information technology (IT) department in the organizational hierarchy.…”

“…In general, on considering the digital transformation phenomenon, attention is first paid to operational efficiency or process simplification (Belvedere et al, 2018;Hess et al, 2016). However, organizations may adopt new digital technologies to achieve more sustainable performance (Bag et al, 2020a;Bressanelli et al, 2018;Dhamija and Bag, 2020;Gupta et al, 2020a;Hsu et al, 2018;Jabbour et al, 2018;Telukdarie et al, 2018), even in the context of the commons (Bonomi et al, 2019;Rossignoli et al, 2018). Thus, the issue of adopting digital technologies to promote more sustainable firm performance is relevant.…”

The Impact of Information Technology Capabilities of Manufacturing Enterprises on Innovation Performance: Evidences from SEM and fsQCA

“…The implementation of relevant policies of Industry 4.0 is expected to revitalize China's real economy, especially her manufacturing industry. The key to carrying out Industry 4.0 in traditional manufacturing enterprises is to improve the digital level of the value chain, namely, realizing the digital transformation (DT) of enterprises [4,5] (DT in this study highlights that manufacturing enterprises realize digitalization form IT capabilities by integrating IT infrastructure, IT human resources, and IT-enabled intangible resources, so as to obtain sustainable competitive advantages [18,19]. However, due to homogeneity and ubiquitous best practice schemes (i.e., enterprise resource planning (ERP) system), scholars specializing in information systems begin to question the direct impacts of IT capabilities on firm performance [10].…”

Digital transformation as a strategy to reach sustainability

“…Additionally, Ananyin et al (2018) present a research program whose focus is on organizations' sustainability problems. In a more specific way, Hsu et al (2018) take the National Palace Museum of China as a case for studying the IT department's role in non-IT-oriented organizations undergoing a digital transformation process, showing that sustainability is an embedded feature of strategic planning. From a logistics perspective in Turkey, Kayikci (2018) examines the sustainability impact of digital transformation on this industry in the context of the fourth industrial revolution along the whole supply chain.…”