Digital transformation: The geopolitical-organizational nexus

This special issue aimed to attract articles situating digital transformation in the geopolitical-organizational nexus. Unlike innovation and change panaceas (or fads) like business process reengineering (BPR) which became popular in the 1990s, digital transformation is a multi-level concept. Extending beyond the redesign of organizational and business processes, the analytical boundaries of digital transformation include ecosystems, organizational networks, business and operational processes, organizational identities, governance structures, and quality/cost dynamics. However, the extant literature on digital transformation continues to use the organization as the primary unit of analysis. Definitions of digital transformation vary widely, with some not dissimilar to the BPR era. The papers included in this special issue provide analytical and empirical examples on the pervasive effects from contemporary digital technology for society, organizations, and citizens. Future work which isolates the digital technology artefact would benefit from further refinement of the digital transformation concept. A starting point is to revisit the digital technology evolution over past decades which reveal the inflection points of technological change, specifically for mainframes, PCs, and the Internet. Such analysis will increase our understanding and contextualization of past panaceas like BPR for generating new insights on how digital technologies are front and center in debates on digital transformation.