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The purpose of this paper is to understand the impact of digital technologies adoption on the forms of organization of large architecture and engineering (A/E) firms. Network theory has attracted scholarly and managerial attention, particularly from the perspective of the changes of project organization. However, little research focuses on network theory as a lens for understanding and managing the new forms of firms’ organization. Additionally, conventional organizational analyses are hampered by the lack of methods for understanding the changes in roles and relationships due to the adoption of digital technologies and examining their impact on organizational structures.

To address this gap, this research adopted a mixed-method case-study approach. This approach combined interviews, regular check-ins, and document analysis with data mining and social network analysis (SNA) to capture the changes of intra-organizational roles and relationships and for understanding their impact on the firm’s organizational structure. Using the data gathered, the authors created a dendrogram that shows the formal organizational structure, a sociogram that displays the informal organizational structure and a network map that visualizes the interplay between the two structures.

From this analysis, the authors identified four main findings: informal roles – as go-to people for advice and information about digital technologies – play within A/E firms facing digital transformation; such go-to people operate through informal networked relationships and beyond their formal roles; most of these relationships do not overlap with the formal reporting relationships; the combination of both these roles and relationships create an informal social network. The authors also show how managers can use SNA to understand the changes in roles and relationships due to the adoption of digital technologies and to diagnose their impact on organizational structures.

This research contributes to the literature of organizational design and change management from a network perspective in the context of the digital transformation of large A/E firms. It provides a systematic data-driven approach to understanding the changes of intra-organizational roles and relationships within A/E firms facing digital transformation and to diagnosing the impact of these changes on firms’ organizational structures.

This paper aims to investigate the effect of specific subsets of digital technologies and governance mechanisms (i.e. relational and contractual) on the efficiency of the automotive supply chain (SC).

Building on the Transaction Costs Economic (TCE) theory, and on the literatures on the governance and Digital Transformation of SCs, the research employs a multi-respondent survey on a sample of 101 Italian automotive suppliers. It analyses the interplay between investments in network and physical–digital interface technologies and buyer–supplier relationship governance models in a joint product development effort. The related effects on costs, from the automotive suppliers' perspective, are considered.

The results confirm the TCE assumptions on governance mechanisms being appropriate to enhance cost performance, but in particular show that digital technologies shape the governance of buyer–supplier relationships with different patterns. The features of synchronisation and accessibility, as ensured by network technologies, are found to strengthen the impact of contractual governance, while the adoption of physical–digital interface technologies, and their enhanced features of virtualisation and traceability, further enhance the impact of relational governance on the efficiency improvements of suppliers.

SC actors need to recognise the importance of long-term collaboration and superior coordination through investments in specific subsets of digital technologies, to ensure a higher product and production data codifiability, transparency and thus integration at both an intra- and an inter-firm level.

This study is one of the first to have considered Digital Transformation in SCs from the suppliers' perspective and its implications on the efficiency of relationship governance with buyers.

This paper is aimed at describing and analysing what school organisers express when they network to expand the access and application of digital technologies in educational systems. Digital technologies develop rapidly in society, creating challenges and opportunities in people’s lives. Schools have an important task: to prepare young people for a future permeated by digital technology.

Participant observations and semi-structured interviews were used to describe and analyse how school organisers describe digitalisation work in the educational system.

The findings show that school organisers describe digital competence and providing support to schools as being important for expanding the access and application of digital technologies in the educational system. They also talk about equality connected to digitalisation work, changes in organisations, the importance of a holistic perspective, and a gold thread. They furthermore explain that networks, a sharing culture, good relations, and good communication enable digitalisation work. In addition, they point out that the lack of time, attitudes towards digital technologies, the lack of digital competence, and resistance to change are some of the constraints for digital technologies in the educational system.

School organisers need to implement digitalisation policies, which can be problematic because they work strategically to support operational activities.

This paper contributes knowledge about school organisers’ work to expand the access and application of digital technologies in the educational system.

This study empirically investigates how ambidextrous innovations and their balancing affect the supply chain financing performance (SCFP) of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), based on signaling theory. Moreover, this study explores the moderating effect of the breadth and depth of digital technology deployment on the relationship between ambidextrous innovations and the SCFP of SMEs.

A mixed-methods design is used, including a qualitative study and a quantitative study. Qualitative data have been collected from six multi-cases in different industries. Questionnaire data have been collected from 259 SMEs in China, and a multiple regression model is used to verify the research hypotheses.

The findings indicate that, in supply chain financing, both exploitative innovation and exploratory innovation are helpful in improving the SCFP of SMEs. For resource-constrained SMEs, a relative balance between exploitative innovation and exploratory innovation can help improve SCFP. The breadth of digital technology deployment can strengthen the relationship between exploitative innovation and SCFP, while the depth of digital technology deployment can weaken the relationship between exploratory innovation and SCFP. In addition, increasing the depth of digital technology deployment strengthens the positive correlation between the relative balance of ambidextrous innovations and SCFP.

To effectively obtain supply chain financing, SMEs can either concentrate their limited resources on a single type of innovation or use relative balance strategies to simultaneously pursue two innovations. In addition, in the process of obtaining supply chain financing by ambidextrous innovations, SMEs should appropriately deploy digital technologies.

This study first deconstructs the impact mechanism of ambidextrous innovation capabilities on SCFP based on signaling theory, and then discusses the balancing effect of ambidextrous innovations on SCFP in the cases of resource-constrained SMEs. This study also goes further and finds the negative moderating effect of digital technology deployment in the process of supply chain financing.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the shifting conceptualization of the democratizing potential of digital technology can be more comprehensively understood by bringing in science and technology studies (STS) perspectives to communication scholarship. The synthesis and discussion are aiming at providing an interdisciplinary theoretical framework for comprehensively understand the democratizing potential of digital technology, and urging researchers to be conscious of assumptions underpinning epistemological positions they take when examining the issue of democratizing potential of digital technology.

The paper is a constructive literature review that synthesizes and integrates existed literature from communication and STS on the democratizing potential of digital technology. The author attempts to bridge theoretical perspectives from communication and STS by identifying core arguments and debates around key concepts and discussing potential implications of different epistemological positions.

Tracing the evolving analytical perspectives of technological determinism, the social construction of technology and actor-network theory, the author argues that researchers should be aware of their underlying epistemological assumptions embedded in relationships among users, technological systems and social factors. Analyzing the contested notion of power in the democratizing potential of digital technology from two contrasting perspectives, the author argues that researchers should recognize both the front end and the back end of digital technology in their analysis. In addition, new challenges of algorithm opacity and accountability in impacting the democratizing potential of digital technology are further discussed.

This study provides an original interdisciplinary theoretical framework by reviewing and bridging scholarship from communication and STS in examining the democratizing potential of digital technology. Adopting this interdisciplinary theoretical framework helps researchers develop a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of the democratizing potential of digital technology.

Social entrepreneurship (SE) is a complex phenomenon designed to resolve numerous societal challenges while remaining economically viable. However, how social entrepreneurs in developing countries have deployed digital technologies to address communal challenges during the Covid-19 crisis is largely undocumented. This research examines social entrepreneurs' adoption of digital technologies, the multi-level organisational conditions, and associated innovative outcomes of engaging digital technologies.

Based on the organisational resilience theoretical framework, this research employs a qualitative methodology, comprising 38 semi-structured interviews with Nigerian SE firms, to investigate social entrepreneurs' engagement with digital technologies.

The study’s findings reveal 19 pathways through which digital technologies enabled organisational resilience outcomes by Nigerian SE firms during the Covid-19 pandemic. This allows the authors to show, via a 3 × 3 matrix, how social entrepreneurs deploy digital technologies to build proximate, dynamic, and continuous resilience in a weak institutional context.

The study’s findings enables the authors to advance the SE – digital technologies – resilience scholarship in a developing economy.

This article aims to understand whether and how a digital transformation strategy (DTS) can strengthen the relationship between network organizations and the generation/regeneration of their business network commons (BNC). Further, it investigates the role of the DTS in managing the BNC, a critical source of business network success.

A two-year longitudinal case study of an Italian business network operating in the wine sector was conducted.

This study provides theoretical insights into the digital, sustainable shift of a business network. On combining a network's business strategy and its DTS, digital resources are a key driver to promote BNC regeneration. A DTS undertaken to manage, regenerate and preserve the BNC can positively affect organizational variables, such as participatory architecture, and the network-level organizational integration and can help in preventing opportunistic behaviors affecting the BNC. Moreover, the DTS supports quality and social responsibility.

This study focuses on an Italian case and its findings are hence not generalizable. It would be interesting to study sustainable business networks' digital shift in different socioeconomic contexts as well as in different industry settings.

Network SMEs and other stakeholders (institutions, competitors and consumers) can foster the transition from a “business-as-usual” strategy to a long-term strategy for digitalized management of common resources.

The study is at the intersection of, and contributes to, several research streams. It contributes to the digital transformation literature by adding information on the positive externalities of digitalization in the social and economic environment. It also contributes to the early streams of organizational and managerial literature on the BNC.

This chapter aims to investigate the uses and appropriations of mobile digital technologies and networks through an examination of their popular manifestations in Brazil. We take a phenomenologically informed hermeneutics approach to understand the nature of social interactions vis-à-vis mobile digital technologies in daily life. The multimodal strategy explores based on documents and quantitative data published by Brazilian research institutes and the press. In addition, using an autoethnographic approach, the authors’ direct observations also provide a contextual framework. Findings suggest that mobile devices and networks were employed as protest tools for individuals and social groups. This finding suggests the emergence of new forms of social organizations and the appropriation of mobile technology as a tool for citizen empowerment and cyber-activism that takes place both in virtual and physical environments in Brazil. These appropriations had direct implications for political protests and changed how they have been organized in Brazil since then. Mobile technologies have enhanced and multiplied possibilities for social interaction, information sharing, and media broadcasting, allowing for the questioning of traditional media and the content provided by them. This research provides a foundation for future analysis about the appropriation of digital technologies specifically related to their use as civic media that is applicable beyond Brazil, given that these technologies are spread in different contexts and countries.

This paper highlights the fluidity with which youth make decisions about engaging with digital technologies including online social media. Specifically, the purpose of this paper is to explore the possibilities that literacy curriculum that centers digital technologies can have for students from immigrant communities through tracing the case of a Bangladeshi–American girl named Sabina.

Grounded in a transliteracies frame, this qualitative case study explores the digital literacy practices of youth in an urban public secondary school in the USA. Data collection included participant observation across various spaces including an eighth grade digital media studies class, school cafeteria and hallways, participants’ homes and online communities. Further data included formal interviews, informal conversations and digital and print artifact collection. Data were analyzed through the lenses of flow and space–time path.

The findings of this paper highlight how Sabina made space for social networking using digital technologies on her own terms as well as how the ways that she collaborated through the use of digital technologies created opportunities for her to be an active participant in her social worlds across home and school contexts.

Analyzing Sabina’s digital literacy practices across diverse social spaces offers insights for educators to create opportunities for diverse youth to leverage digital technologies to support skills such as collaboration and civic engagement, which have been identified as defining characteristics of twenty-first century literacies. This case points to the imperative for teachers to create connected learning classrooms that offer opportunities for youth to use digital technologies to support their efforts to make change in the world on their own terms.

The paper offers a comprehensive understanding of how digital transformation affects business models and how firms operate and compete effectively and successfully in a digital economy.

The research adopted an abductive approach (Dubois and Gadde, 2002) through constant movement between theory and empirical evidence. A systematic literature review led the first conceptual development and examples of practices from cultural heritage sectors were used in the theorizing process.

This paper depicts a digital model framework through a set of assumptions about how an organization creates and delivers value in an interconnected way by orchestrating new interactive processes, and providing experience propositions to customers, and about how value is framed in terms of economic, social and cultural outcomes.

The study contributes to the scientific debate by discussing the role of digital business models as enhancements more rather than replacements of traditional business models; it frames a digital business model as consisting of three main pillars: value orchestration, experience propositions and value sharing.