Steering and Setting Free: Insights From a 20‐Year Retrospective Case Study of a Security and Justice Organization's Digital Transformation

ABSTRACT Advances in digital technologies are expected to fundamentally change how organizations operate and create value. Empirical studies show that public organizations face difficulties organizing and sustaining this digital transformation. To better understand these challenges, this study examines the organizational mechanisms underlying digital transformation in a public organization over the past 20 years. Our findings show that this transformation was primarily enabled by an emergent change approach, with influential planned changes occurring only occasionally. We identify the organizational mechanisms underlying both types of change and analyze their interdependence. Our findings suggest that both emergent and planned change approaches may be needed to enable digital transformation in public organizations effectively, but that combining them is complex in practice.