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Digital “x”—Charting a Path for Digital-Themed Research

Abayomi Baiyere^1,2; Varun Grover³; Kalle Lyytinen⁴; Stephanie Woerner⁵; Alok Gupta⁶

¹ Digitalization Department, Copenhagen Business School, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark; · ² Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario K7L 3N6, Canada · ³ Walton College of Business, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Arkansas 72701 · ⁴ Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio 44106 · ⁵ Center for Information Systems Research, Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142; · ⁶ Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455

We live in a time when digital technologies reshape most aspects of business and social life. This challenges received assumptions about modes of operation in organizations. As a result, scholars and practitioners increasingly use the label “digital” to signify that something has changed to the extent that a plethora of long-established management concepts are expressed in a new formulaic form of “digital x,” and x can stand for innovation, strategy, transformation, infrastructure, etc. In the information systems discipline and beyond, “digital” has emerged as an oft-used conceptual label to characterize age-long phenomena hitherto described by the IT (or x) label. There is a sense among academic and practitioner communities that digital and IT are not mere synonyms, but beyond the hype, something fundamentally different is being signaled when the “digital” label is invoked. This paper traces the intellectual roots and foundations of the growing use of “digital” as a conceptual label, identifies when the label use is warranted as well as outlines implications that the moniker holds for future scholarship, policy, and practice. In particular, the paper offers actionable guidance that enables more reflective use of the term “digital” as we move forward.

DOI

10.1287/isre.2022.1186

Volume

34 (2)

Pages

463-486

Language

en

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BibTeX

Sources

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