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- Hedlund, Hugo, 1988-
(författare)
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Disentangling digital transformation : mechanisms of change in institutional logics
- 2023
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Digital transformation (DT) is en vogue, but vague: while consultants, policymakers and researchers stress that it is a major challenge to organizations of all kinds and sizes, how DT unfolds, or even what it entails, remains elusive. Previous research on DT frames it as a problem of strategic technology adoption or information technology (IT)-related change associated with business models and processes. While contributions in this vein are informative, they are suspiciously similar to previous studies in the information systems field of the effects of information technology on organizational workings. Further, this focus backgrounds potentially novel issues of institutional and wider societal change, such as the interaction between distinct social spheres and technology implicated in any setting affected by its introduction. Promising emerging research has adopted institutional theory to address these issues, but central questions at the intersection of digital technology and institutional change remain unanswered. In this dissertation, I draw on the theoretical perspective of institutional logics to theorize, explain, and illustrate digital transformation as a phenomenon cutting through diverse analytical levels and societal contexts. To this end, the research question guiding both the dissertation and the empirical studies (presented in four appended papers) that it is based upon has been:How do technology-associated generative mechanisms drive digital transformation in institutions? The research has identified generative mechanisms as non-deterministic forces that shape the outcomes we observe in the world around us. In this dissertation, I address DT of the public sector as an investigative institutional context to answer my research question. This setting has a long and ongoing history of digitalization characterized by shifting and often conflicting institutional demands. The first of the four appended research papers illuminates how research on digital innovation has informed the study of innovation in a problem setting characterized by institutional complexity (the public sector). The second examines how actors under differing institutional pressures and worldviews organize to innovate with digital technology. The third shows how technology-associated generative mechanisms drive DT in the public sector, and the fourth theorizes a novel perspective on digital transformation. Synthesizing and moving beyond the findings of the individual papers, in the dissertation I define the role of generative mechanisms in DT, explain how, when, and why mechanisms come to cause the phenomenon in institutions, and discuss their effects and implications for research and practice.
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- Vallo Hult, Helena, 1976-
(författare)
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Digital Work : Coping with Contradictions in Changing Healthcare
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Digital work is bringing significant change to all professions, as established work settings are replaced by remote work and digital teamwork and collaboration. Contradictions arise when work is no longer bounded in time or space and personal and professional life merge. This raises several issues. The issues include control of time, professional boundaries, and privacy and security. Healthcare is one area where digital technology is a growing influence on professional work, roles, and relationships. The medical profession demands constant learning as it undergoes accelerating advancements in both medicine and technology. This has the effect of a change in patient-physician relationships as patients access medical information on public sites and interact with providers outside the clinical setting.The research documents the effects of professional use of multiple technologies to interact, share knowledge, and coordinate. The research problem therefore addresses the blending of personal and professional technology use in healthcare specifically and the public sector in general, focusing on the impact of digitally engaged patients on practice.The aim of the thesis is to explore dimensions of digital work that arise from the use of digital technologies in daily work and learning, with a focus on the professional role of physicians.It poses the following research questions: RQ1) What opportunities and challenges do physicians experience from using digital technologies for work and learning and how do they view their role and expertise in relation to informed and digitally engaged patients? And RQ2) What does the analysis reveal about thecharacteristics of digital work, and its implications for professionalism? The topic covers dynamics between information, technology, and people, in the context of work and learning in healthcare. Therefore, the perspectives guiding the research lie at the intersection of multiple disciplines, like Information Systems, workplace learning and health informatics. The thesis adopts a sociotechnical approach wherein the concept of information system is understood broadly to comprise information content, social context, and specific technologies. For the analysis of the research data, it combines workplace learning theories with concepts from the information infrastructure, and infrastructuring literature to identify and analyze characteristics and contradictions of digital work. The thesis comprises five peer-reviewed research papers. The data comes from 15 semi-structured interviews, three focus groups and a survey of 148 Swedish resident physicians. The project is informed by an engaged research approach, including observations from longitudinal collaborative research, and development projects that involved physicians and other public sector professionals. By exploring and describing physicians’ interactions with multiple digital technologies as part of everyday work, the thesis responds to calls for research to capture the sociotechnical dimensions and effects of digital technologies on work beyond traditional standalone systems. It addresses a real-world problem that public sector healthcare faces, by providing contextual details and insights into how digital health technology and public information intervene in the patient-physician relationship. The findings suggest that digital work can be understood as a process of coping with contradictions, where physicians reconfigure professionalism through ongoing efforts to embrace the new forms of work without sacrificing core values. The thesis concludes with guidelines to address the transformation of professional roles and responsibilities, the new qualities and competencies required for digital work, and the need for interdisciplinary research and consideration of diverse perspectives for an appropriate design of sociotechnical medical systems.
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