关键词: 数字化转型, 过程模型, 科技给予, 意义建构, 意义给赋

Abstract:    Digital transformation is defined as the use of new digital technologies to enable strategic changes in organizations. Companies, particularly those in traditional industries, now are increasingly considering digital transformation as a strategic way to deal with the dynamic environment and to gain strategic advantages. Although a variety of diversified organizations have attempted to achieve organizational transformation by leveraging new digital technologies, this phenomenon of digital transformation has remained surprisingly unnoticed in the literature. In particular, we know very little on the processes and inherent mechanisms of digital transformation in these companies in traditional industries. These knowledge gaps may account for the difficulties encountered by most companies in traditional industries when considering digital transformation.
  To fill these knowledge voids in the literature, this study conducts an explorative analysis on the processes and the underlying mechanisms of digital transformation via a longitudinal case study on a typical company in traditional industries-Double Star Group (DSG). After nearly going bankruptcy in 2012, DSG started a journey of "fulfilling the second undertaking" by primarily leveraging digital technologies (including information technology, the Internet of things, cloud computing, robotics, etc.) to instigate managerial innovations, business model innovations and organizational transformation, and now it has evolved into an international enterprise group with the integration of tire manufacturing, smart equipment, smart logistics (e.g. Robot) and smart cyclic utilization of wasted rubber. The results of the digital transformation at DSG are evident: not only has its profit ratio significantly been improved, but also it has been listed in the "Asia′s 500 Most Influential Brands" and the "China′s 500 Most Valuable Brands" for three consecutive years.
  By applying technology affordance theory and sensemaking theory to the phenomenon of digital transformation and the case analysis, this study uncovers that the digital transformation of traditional companies is a top-down process, including three phases, e.g., the initialization of transformation, the consensus formation of transformation and the actualization of transformation. In each phase, the perceived digital strategic affordance for transformation (i.e., transformation cognition for each phase) arises from the dual social structure composed by both actors and digital technology. This study then further reveals four digital affordances that enable organizational transformation, including the perceived digital strategic affordance, the shared digital strategic affordance, the perceived digital business affordance and the actualized digital business affordance. Sensemaking is the primary mechanism to enable the formation of digital affordance that supports organizational transformation in each phase. Sense-breaking and sense-giving are the primary mechanisms for the actors in higher organizational levels to influence the sensemaking of the actors in lower organizational levels, and thereby, they are the primary mechanisms that enable the process transition in digital transformation. 
   This study reveals the processes of digital transformation for traditional companies and offers deep understandings on the underlying relations among actors, digital technologies and transformation cognitions, providing three contributions to existing research. First, the top-down processual perspective not only helps to provide detailed description and deep explanations to the complex phenomenon, but also is helpful to analyze the conditions and transmitting mechanisms for each phase. Thus, this paper opens the black box of digital transformation processes conducted by the traditional companies, making good complements to the IT-enabled organizational transformation research. Second, existing research that adopted technology affordance theory focused on team and individual level; however, this research rarely paid attention to the strategic level. This study indicates that the dual "actor-digital technology" social structure acts as the foundation of digital transformation, and thereby expands technology affordance theory to the strategic research. The digital affordances enabling organization transformation identified in this study, e.g. the perceived digital strategic affordance, could be used as the constructs to be explored by future studies. Third, this study suggests that digital transformation is significantly different from the IT-enabled organizational transformation. In the digital context, the digital technology begins to fuse with the organizational strategy. This fusion thus embodies not only in the dual "actor-digital technology" structure, but also in the proactive role of actors in making sense of the potentials of digital technologies in enabling transformation. 
   This study also offers two managerial implications for practitioners. First, for government agencies that make polices, this study indicates that digital technologies are the major transformative forces that enable organizational transformation, as well as the new and old kinetic energy conversion in our country. Thus, when making policies and guidance, government agencies should think highly of the effects of transforming, leading and fusing of digital technologies, and guide traditional companies to conduct digital transformation via subsidies, demonstration promotion, etc. Second, this study reveals that digital transformation is a top-down process with a gradual improvement, following the path from "the strategic cognition by the initiator" to "the collective and shared cognition by the key actors" to "the collective cognition by the actors in the operational level". This study then offers the top managers of traditional companies a reference process model that will guide their practices for digital transformation. Digital transformation should pay more attention to the leadership framework and the top-level design, as well as the relationships between digital technologies and human actors in organizations. 

Key words: digital transformation, process model, technology affordance, sense-making, sense-giving