HOW AND WHY CHANGE AGENTS LEVERAGE AMBIGUITY: DIGITAL CHANGE AS A PROGRESSION OF PROCESS CONFIGURATIONS

Digital change (DC) broadly entails a radical reconfiguration of an organization’s modus operandi through the deployment of a growing and often untried set of digital technologies. Prior research has extensively examined DC in terms of outcomes, antecedents, and mechanisms. However, one critical aspect remains underexplored: the role of ambiguity arising from unknown technologies, non-linear change processes, and the coexistence of multiple organizational goals. Existing DC literature commonly attributes failure to an inability to remove ambiguity – that is, the contested and fluid meanings, goals, and means of DC – and to align clear strategic intent with well-defined technology functions. We challenge this view by conceptualizing ambiguity not as a problem to be eliminated, but as an inherent and generative condition of DC that must be actively reckoned with. Drawing on March’s distinction between goal ambiguity and technology ambiguity, we develop a framework of four DC configurations based on the presence or absence of ambiguity in strategic intent and in the articulated role of digital technologies. We analyze four DC cases, treating each as a progression through shifting configurations of goal and technology ambiguity. Using three longitudinal empirical cases and one baseline alignment case from prior literature, we identify four distinct DC pathways, each characterized by a specific sequence of configurations. We theorize how ambiguity shapes DC trajectories and outcomes and show that practitioners may need to deliberately increase or decrease ambiguity in goals and/or technology functions to propel DC forward.