Comprehending Digital Maturity - Developing a Maturity Model to Guide Digital Business Transformation

  • This study aims at comprehending the sociotechnical construct digital maturity to facilitate the development of a maturity model guiding digital business transformation. More precisely, applying a mixed-methods approach, this paper examines which organizational capabilities foster digital maturity and how those distinct configurations of qualities, skills and high-level routines interrelate. Combining findings retrieved from an explorative review of digital transformation literature, digital maturity is conceptualized as a construct of numerous leading and lagging organizational capabilities that can be clustered in four competence fields, namely Leadership Competence, Talent Readiness, Operational Excellence and Customer Centricity. In order to refine this initial conceptual model, expert interviews have been conducted. Referring to better practice in their respective industries, experts interviewed have provided success characteristics for selected organizational capabilities to optimally promote digital maturity achievement. Based on these success characteristics, a four-staged maturity model is developed encompassing modular maturity stage descriptions, including prescriptive recommendations for action. Thereby, it is pointed out that the model and its dimensions’ criteria adjust with digital context. Accordingly, firms’ journey towards digital maturity achievement is not expected to be linear and finite but based on continuous organizational capability improvements. Transforming the analogue maturity model into an online assessment tool, quantitative data has been collected to examine relationships among competence fields and underlying organizational capabilities making up digital maturity. Multiple mediation analyses conducted show that that Leadership Competence, including top-down initiation, organization and support, depicts the basis for successful digital transformation, but that the actual implementation of digital measures into internally or externally-directed innovations, is highly dependent on technical enablement and intrinsically-inspired engagement of a firm’s workforce. In fact, it is statically proven that a negligence of Talent Readiness as competence field would significantly impair Leadership Competence’s impact on lagging competence fields Operational Excellence and Customer Centricity. Interpreting these quantitative findings, it is pointed out that the sequence and intensity in which organizational capabilities are developed can significantly foster or hamper digital maturity achievement. More precisely, an initial prioritization of leading competence fields, Leadership Competence and Talent Readiness, is substantiated as best practice in the pursue of digital maturity. Concluding on qualitative and quantitative findings, the understanding of the digital maturity construct is expanded from solely a cumulative measure of competence fields’ performances to a measure of dynamic capability. As a dynamic capability, digital maturity involves the continuous adjustment and achievement of objectives while building digital transformation-enhancing organizational capabilities. In line with dynamic capability research, it is reasoned that detailed qualities of the digital maturity construct are idiosyncratic and context-dependent, but that best practice, as described in this paper, can be leveraged when developing organizational capabilities. Finally, it is recommended to assess organizational capabilities and their dynamics in more depth in future research projects splitting the current scoring model into four assessments, each covering one of the identified competence fields and potential contingency factors in more detail.

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Metadaten
Author:Klara Marie Gremme
URN:urn:nbn:de:kobv:b721-opus4-14947
Referee:Avo Schönbohm
Advisor:Michael Graffius
Document Type:Master's Thesis
Language:English
Date of first Publication:2019/02/04
Publishing Institution:Hochschulbibliothek HWR Berlin
Granting Institution:Hochschule für Wirtschaft und Recht Berlin
Date of final exam:2018/07/25
Release Date:2019/02/04
Page Number:170
Institutes:FB I - Wirtschaftswissenschaften / International Business and Consulting: Strategic Management M.A.
Licence (German):License LogoUrheberrechtsschutz