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This paper aims to understand what prevents established law firms from embracing digitalization and discusses barriers to solving the emerging ambidexterity problem. Law firms have been organized in the same way for decades. However, digital opportunities are emerging and new competitors are challenging established firms. This presents established law firms with an ambidexterity problem: How can law firms simultaneously uphold their successful way of working while entering a new world of digitalization, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning?

Previous research suggests that law firms are slow in digital transformation, compared to other Professional Service Firms (PSFs). In this paper, the authors explore why this happens. Interview data from representatives in law firms are complemented with data from architects as well as legal industry data and field notes. The data have been analyzed to spot patterns and emerging themes.

The authors find that established law firms face structural and cultural barriers to applying ambidextrous solutions. When comparing law firms with architecture firms, the authors see that while established architecture firms have combined digital exploration with ongoing exploitation, established law firms have focused on exploitation, leaving digital exploration to new legal tech firms. This difference can be attributed to industry context and professional culture.

This paper shows that both structural and contextual ambidexterity is a challenge for established law firms. This paper contributes to the understanding of barriers to embrace digital technology, and supports practitioners in efforts to remove these barriers.

This paper aims to contribute to discussion around the need for improved models for change in a rapidly changing world. It also aims to provide insights for further discussion around how a Nordic management approach can relate to the need for new change ideas. Since Lewin proposed that change requires unfreezing, moving and refreezing, several changes in models have been introduced. Many models include similar factors such as the need for a vision, a clear process and to motivate change. These change factors are investigated in this paper and related to a fast-paced, uncertain and volatile environment

Based on a collaborative research approach, engaging with leaders in five organizations, all headquartered in the Nordic countries, this paper examines problems with traditional change models in a contemporary context as well as how these challenges could be handled.

This paper concludes that leaders still find value in traditional models but see that these models need to be adapted to include elements of more recent research. This paper suggests tweaks in traditional change factors and ends with a proposition with a renewed model for change.

The ideas in this paper could be seen as a bridge between traditional and modern models – a bridge that seems to be needed in practice. It draws on action research and close relationships with top management, as they are working with change – potentially giving the study a unique angle on a practical, widespread problem: succeeding with change

The literature on innovation/change predicts that entrepreneurial initiatives will be killed by the established organizational system. The general answer is to put innovations in separate units. This is not possible for corporate entrepreneurship initiatives, however. In this action research study, we focus on corporate entrepreneurship initiatives’ strategies for survival. We collected data by following 11 corporate entrepreneurship initiatives as they were pursued. We summarize their effort in three transformation mechanisms: aligning with purpose, creating trust, and creating attachment with autonomy. The data indicate that these factors not only contributed to the success of the initiatives but also to renewing the organizational system.

A wider participation from outside the top management team can support the strategy creation and execution of firms through improving access to knowledge, increasing innovativeness and creating legitimacy for the strategy. However, creating a climate of trust where ideas are freely expressed and challenged is easier said than done. This paper thus focuses on trust in strategizing, in particular in strategy workshops with wider participation.

The analysis is based on qualitative data from 10 strategy-making processes consisting of a total of 28 strategy workshops. Data were collected through interviews and joint reflections with the leaders, external facilitators and consultants, as well as through action research.

This study identifies three factors that influence trust in strategy workshops with wider participation, namely opening up the conversation, clarity of the participative process and delivering with honest intent. These factors could play crucial roles in creating the trust needed for wider participation in strategy workshops.

This paper provides strategy actors (e.g. leaders, consultants) with actionable knowledge about what strategy workshops with a wider circle of participants require to create trust.

This study relates to the ongoing and increased interest in openness for strategy-as-practice in general and open strategy in particular. Moreover, it contributes to the discussion that the boundaries between strategizing and change tend to become blurry. Therefore, the present paper contributes to the theory and practice of strategy creation, strategy execution and change by investigating wider participation in strategy workshops.

The literature on organizational change has long acknowledged the need to balance stability and economic efficiency with the need to be flexible and to change. Authors, certainly in the dynamic capabilities tradition but also in other perspectives, have stressed the importance of more open and loosely coupled systems to promote adaption. However, many organizations do not operate on such premises but rather rely on creating efficient business units through tight coupling, building strict social and administrative control, and jointly relying on common systems. In this study, we conduct 46 interviews with employees from three different retail organizations to investigate how units in such tightly coupled systems change within the framework of the set standards. Through contrasting the characteristics of high and low functioning units, we identify three mechanisms that seem to enable the units to successfully and repeatedly realign and establish new configurations. We conclude that the orchestrator of all three realignment mechanisms is the middle manager, and we discuss the middle manager's role and the different activities that enable a successful realignment.

The effects of the spread of COVID-19 across the world are devastating, both from a health and an economic perspective. However, we also see encouraging examples of collaborative and innovative initiatives, in society and in organizations. The purpose of this paper is to focus on initiatives related to digital business model innovation. The authors explore how organizational characteristics provide a variety of opportunities for digital responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and discuss the potential consequences for the speed of digital transformation in organizations and society.

In this paper, the authors analyze how organizations attempt to mitigate the negative effects of fighting COVID-19 using digital business model responses. The authors draw on a qualitative study where they have collected data from the retail and service industries. They have analyzed the data in relation to theory to better understand this ongoing phenomenon.

The authors have identified four categories of organizations (crisispreneurs, accelerators, endurers and thrivers). Each category faces different challenges and shows a different intensity in their digital transformation. The authors propose that the rapid turn toward digital business models will have enduring effects, as organizations have gained transformational capabilities that will remain, and that the digital trajectory has, as a result, changed forever.

The findings in this paper point toward new challenges for leaders and policymakers in terms of how to support initiatives and meet the needs of different categories of organizations while simultaneously being conscious of the potential societal effects of this rapid digital shift. The authors hope that this paper can be of value for managing this shock and learning how to adapt for the future taking certain aspects of current business models as the departure point.