Strategic Responses to the COVID Pandemic: Empirical Evidence of Shifts in Digital Transformation Strategy

• While there have been numerous reports on the increased utilization of digital solutions during the COVID pandemic, this says little about how organizations have reconfigured their digital transformation strategies. In this study, we utilize panel data from a national measurement of digital maturity conducted with over 300 organizations and over 15,000 respondents in the public sector to analyze the effect of the pandemic on the aggregate digital transformation strategy. As the results show, the pandemic was handled through the sequential combination of two unique digital transformation strategies. First, organizations responded by decreasing the emphasis on organizational capabilities and increasing the emphasis on technological capabilities in 2020. Second, organizations shifted over to a strategy that increased emphasis on organizational capabilities and decreased the emphasis on technological capabilities in 2021. This is discussed as an organizational response to exogenous disruption in general and digital transformation strategy in particular.

Subject headings

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Data- och informationsvetenskap -- Systemvetenskap, informationssystem och informatik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Computer and Information Sciences -- Information Systems (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Digital transformation strategy

public sector

digital maturity

digital government

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kon (subject category)