Re-framing digitalisation

During the past few years, we have moved from considering the digital as unfamiliar and strange to an era in which technology has become ubiquitous and in numerous ways intertwined with organisational life, business and politics. The research track Re-framing digitalisation explores the implications of this shift in technological base when it comes to how we manage organisations, how we create value, how we govern.

What happens when digital co-workers enter the workplace? Will digital transformation help or hinder international growth for Swedish companies? Has Covid-19 permanently changed the way we work and manage?

The research track re-framing digitalization studies digital transformation as an organizational, business and societal change process, rather than as a question of technology implementation. Researchers in the track also raise critical questions regarding the consequences of the use of digital technologies, for both organization and society. To this end, we mobilize different approaches, from those considering digitalization as a new phenomenon which can be captured and studied in the same way as other kinds of innovations and change processes, to those seeing digitalization as a new phenomenon with specific characteristics for which researchers need to pose new questions.

Questions that we contribute to better understand and manage are:

• Digital technology and new work/management practices explores how work and management fundamentally change when
  digital technologies become more and more integral parts for organizing processes.
  
  
• Digital technology and business relationships studies how digitalization affects the interaction-patterns of industrial companies, especially amongst larger multinational enterprises.
  
  
• Digital technology and strategy explores the consequences of digital transformation for firms in terms of their innovativeness, operational efficiency and international growth.
  
  
• Digital technology and ecosystem: investigates the development and diffusion of digital platforms and its impacts on markets
  and organizations using multidisciplinary and multi-actor perspectives.

Re-framing digitalization for future business, management and society

Re-framing digitalization thus contributes to future business, management and society by supporting the transition to an era where digital technologies are ubiquitous and in numerous ways intertwined with organizational life, business and politics. In a time when technological advances impact not only organizations and businesses, but also individuals and societies, with what is perceived as an increasing pace, our researchers encourage to critically scrutinize the changes we witness to produce deeper understanding of the role digital technologies play and of how to handle them.

The Covid-19 epidemics has accelerated the pace of digitalization in all aspects of our lives, from private situations to work to supply chains, possibly providing a decisive turn in the digital transformation. Whether a business should have a webpage or not is no longer a question, talking of virtual meetings as something exotic is no longer meaningful, and digital co-workers have made their entrance. As it has been said, while we were waiting for the radical revolution of advanced AI, we did not notice that AI is already everywhere, although possibly not so clever as we thought. The research thus focuses on the current challenges organization faces in relation to the latest digital technologies.

Collaboration

The research track gathers many externally-funded projects in which approximately 25 researchers collaborate with both private and public organizations, such as ABB, Västerås stad, Eskilstuna kommun. Examples are a 6-years long Forte-funded research program in collaboration with Anglia Ruskin university (DigMa), several co-production projects on welfare technologies and the Sörmlandskontraktet funded by Eskilstuna municipality that has contributed to the expansion of knowledge production in regards to business development to the benefit of a specific track in the business administration program. Results include both theoretical contributions and practical insight and tools, as presented in blogs, books, a webpage, or in the form of a checklist.