Constraints of Digital Transformation
Science and Information Technology
Jwan Khisro is defending her PhD thesis in the subject informatics.
Jwan Khisro is defending her PhD thesis in the subject informatics.
Digital transformation in the public sector is viewed as instrumental in coping with organizational and societal challenges such as demographic changes, budget difficulties, growing complexity and interconnections of digital legacy. While there are opportunities for the public sector to benefit from digital transformation, there are also important constraints to consider. The aim of this thesis is to offer insight into these constraints and to conceptualize how they impact digital transformation in public sector organizations. I studied digital transformation from an organizational ambidexterity perspective.
To address the aim, I employed a clinical inquiry approach in two case
studies. The two cases chosen for this study, the County Administrative Boards (CAB) and Sundsvall municipality, span two of three layers of Swedish government. The main contribution of this thesis consists of three generative mechanisms that constrain digital transformation in the public sector organizations, namely: the sluggishness in IT Governance, reactivity in the funding model, and misallocation of resources for digital infrastructure. Each mechanism biases the ambidextrous balancing of digital transformation in the public sector organization, i.e. constituting a risk for sustained viability.