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This paper aims to develop a comprehensive typology of organizational transformations that is based on both content and process characteristics of transformations, and it is relevant to organizations in India.

Through a review of literature, 17 different features/elements of organizational transformations were identified and organized into three dimensions – object, magnitude and speed of transformation – to develop a foundational framework of transformations. Through a comprehensive search of publicly available information, 52 cases of organizational transformations between 1991 and 2011 were identified. A case report for each transformation was then prepared and examined to identify elements of each transformation by referring to the foundational framework. Transformations were then classified into different types using cluster analysis, with elements as variables and cases as objects to be clustered.

Nine distinct types of transformations were found. They were named quickfixer, extender, healer, evolver, peripheral, recurrent, methodical, internal and cultivator based on each case’s characteristics as captured in case reports.

This study brings together transformation characteristics that have been largely considered distinct in literature to develop a comprehensive typology that depicts the complexity of organizational transformations. This is also one of the first studies to develop a typology of transformations that is based on and thus relevant to organizations in India.

Organisational learning drives tourism organisations towards more sustainable tourism. Digital transformation also provides opportunities for sustainable tourism development. This study aims to combine these perspectives and explore how digital transformation enables organisational learning to contribute to sustainable tourism, following organisational learning theory (OLT).

Based on a critical realist paradigm, this study focuses on developing an in-depth understanding of organisational learning in tourism organisations. Thirty qualitative interviews with tourism organisations participating in an executive development programme (EDP) show how tourism organisations create, retain and transfer knowledge.

This study demonstrates that the EDP initiates knowledge creation through content transmission and exchange, triggers knowledge retention through utilisation of digital technologies and reinforces digitalisation through data value creation. Furthermore, this study enables knowledge transformation as implementation, which contributes to the three pillars of sustainable tourism and facilitates the development of networks encouraging sustainable tourism.

This study identifies approaches that enable economic, social and environmentally sustainable tourism development by facilitating collaborations via digital transformation, digital technologies that guide guest streams, online mobility offers and online environmental awareness campaigns that reduce environmental impacts. Thus, this study strengthens OLT and has implications for organisational learning and tourism policymakers.

Much of recent academic and professional interest in exploring digital transformation and enterprise systems has focused on the technology or the organizations' external forces, leaving internal factors, in particular employees, overlooked. The purpose of this paper is to explore digital literacy of employees as an organizational affordance to capture contextual factors within which digital technologies are situated and are used.

We used the evidence-based practice for information systems approach, and undertook a systematic literature review of 30 papers coupled with brainstorming with 11 professional experts on the neglected topic of digital literacy and its assessment.

This paper draws upon affordance theory, and develops a novel framework for conceptualization of digital literacy of employees as an organizational affordance. We do this by distinguishing digital literacy at the individual level and organizational level, and by assessing digital literacy through Information/Cognitive and Social Practice/Articulation affordances.

The current paper contributes to the notion of organizational affordances by examining the effect of interactions between employee-technology through digital literacy of employees in using digital technologies. We offer a novel conceptualization of digital literacy to improve understanding of the role of employee in digital transformation and utilization of enterprise systems. Thus, our definition of digital literacy offers an extension to the recent discussions in the IS literature regarding the actualization of affordances by bringing a lens of employees into the process.

This paper operationalizes digital literacy at organizational and individual levels, and offers managers a high-level tool to assess digital literacy of their employees. By doing so, managers can achieve the fit between employees' capabilities and digital technologies that will improve affordance actualization and support their digital transformation initiatives.

The study is one of early attempts to apply and extend affordance theory on digital literacy at organizational level by not limiting the concept to the individual level. The proposed framework improves the communication among researchers and between researchers and practitioners.

To overcome change management challenges, organizations often rely on stories as means of communication. Storytelling has emerged as a leading change management tool to influence and bring people on sharing knowledge. Nevertheless, this study aims to suggest stories of change as a more effective tool that helps people in taking action toward transformation processes.

The authors apply design science research to develop and evaluate how writing a prospective story engages organizational actors in the transformation process. The authors test the story-making artifact in a field study with five companies and 115 employees who participated in 75 workshops.

Using the findings to discuss the role of story-making in facilitating the emergence of new behaviors in transformation processes, the authors link story-making with the opportunity to make change happen through knowledge dissemination rather than merely understanding it.

The authors illustrate the role of iterations, peers and self-criticism that help story-makers embrace sensemaking, developing a shared knowledge based that influence individual actions.

The authors propose the story-making approach that organizations can follow to nurture change to make transformation happen through knowledge cocreation.

The research explores story-making as an individual act of writing prospective stories to facilitate the emergence of new behaviors through shared knowledge.

This study aims to explore how project-based firms, which generally organize most of their work around temporary projects in discontinuous and fragmented types of business contexts, proactively formulate and implement digital transformation strategies under institutional pressures in a predigital era.

An exploratory case study was conducted in a large-scale construction company in China using multiple data collection methods, including semistructured interviews, documentation collection and observation.

An integrated framework is developed to conceptualize three key dimensions of digital transformation strategies of project-based firms: strategic adaptation for organization-environment fit through balancing the internal efficiency needs with the external legitimacy pressures; proactive business transformation through comprehensively managing the roles of digital technologies in optimizing defined business processes and fostering new business models; and delicate organizational transformation to integrate temporary project-level operation processes with ongoing firm-level business processes.

This study represents an exploratory effort to empirically investigate how project-based firms strategically organize complex digital transformation imperatives in their discontinuous and fragmented business contexts. The findings contribute to deepened understandings of how complex organizational and environmental contexts can be comprehensively managed for systemic business and organizational transformations to leverage the value of emerging digital technologies for project-based organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to address a specific gap in the literature that centers on individual perspective of leadership within the context of organizational transformation. It explores synergies between leadership, analyzed as a combination of individual and plural perspectives, and managerial drivers relating to organizational transformation (communicating, mobilizing, and evaluating).

The study examines a complex organizational transformation initiative faced by an Italian, family-owned fashion design company through an action research project.

The results illustrate that context may play a role in accelerating the implementation of plural forms of leadership and their effectiveness during some phases of transformation. Specific emerging manifestations of leadership and synergies with transformation drivers are identified.

This is a single case study derived from an action research project. Although the approach is congruent with the nature of the phenomenon and the purpose of the study, it does not aim for generalizability, and as such further empirical investigation is advocated.

The paper offers an original perspective on leadership of organizational transformation, discussing in particular the co-existence of individual and plural leadership and the role of context.

The purpose of this case study is to gain insight into how a cultural change process develops as a result of organizational transformation.

This case study employs an ethnographic and longitudinal research design. The transformation period of the organization is described by means of desk research and interviews with the management. Simultaneously, the cultural change process is described following four organizational mindset analyses.

This paper supports the theoretical assumption that culture changes as a reaction to transformation. However, in this case study, culture is also proven to be proactive, in that it emerged a year before the actual transformation was carried out. It is believed that the announcement of the new transformation caused a shift in the organizational mindset, enabling its members to deal with a situation of high uncertainty and stress. Whether the cultural change process in reaction to the transformation will evolve into a new sustainable cultural equilibrium could not yet be determined.

This study has contributed to comprehending the relationship between transformation and the process of cultural change. Cultural change is not solely a reaction to transformation. It can also be proactive in that it emerges before the transformation is carried out. That makes cultural change both proactive and reactive in relation to transformation, an insight that, as such, has not yet been discussed in the cultural theory.

This paper aims to comprehend organizational transformation (OT) as a permanent, continuous and iterative system, which integrates large transformations that, in turn, require smaller, additional transformations. For OT implementation, a conceptual model is proposed, called the four orders of OT.

Case study with a qualitative approach, used critical incident interviews, which were applied to describe both successful and unsuccessful events. Participants were chosen by convenience, and information was processed with Nvivo software.

The Colombian family holding studied was founded in 1974, and in its 47 years of existence, has implemented important transformations in its three companies. These showcase the four types of OT proposed, although third order support has been applied most often. The events that triggered said transformations are mainly of exogenous character, and broad responsibility was found on both the upper management and work team levels for implementation processes. This was also found for the indicator use and the various planning approaches used, depending upon the transformation type.

Future research is required, so as to refine and validate the conceptual OT model proposed in other types of companies and development contexts. The proposed construct permits company managers to design and more efficiently manage transformations, while satisfying the diverse orders proposed in the theoretical model.

An integrative conceptual model called “the four orders of OT” is proposed and validated in a Colombian family businesses group, which is composed of three companies.

The purpose of this study is to examine potential predictors and moderating relationships involving one type of organizational cynicism – cynicism about organizational transformation (CAOC).

A total of 137 subjects participated in this study. The participants had been in their current positions at work for an average of 4.77 years and had been with their current organization an average of 7.28 years. CAOC was measured using the 12-item scale (α = 0.86) from Wanous et al.’s (2000) study. The response scale had five points ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.”

CAOC and negative affectivity were positively correlated, thus supporting H1. H2 was not supported, i.e. subjective change was not related to CAOC, and objective change was actually correlated negatively with CAOC. H3 was not supported, i.e. individuals with a higher organizational commitment will not have a less positive relationship between CAOC and organizational transformation (subjective and objective) than individuals with lower organizational commitment. H4 was not supported, i.e. individuals who perceive a higher degree of petty tyranny will not have a stronger relationship between CAOC and organizational transformation (subjective and objective) than individuals who perceive a lower degree of petty tyranny. H5 was not supported, i.e. individuals who perceive a higher degree of perceived organizational support (POS) will not have a weaker relationship between CAOC and organizational transformation (subjective and objective) than individuals who perceive a lower degree of POS.

The intent of the present study is to examine potential causes of CAOC and potential moderators of the relationships between those antecedents and CAOC. In particular, two variables are proposed as antecedents (negative affectivity with past organizational transformations) and three as moderators (organizational commitment, petty tyranny by supervisors and POS).

Complex crises affect tightly coupled systems making them highly unpredictable. This paper aims to determine how organizations learn from their crisis experience shaping their knowledge and transformation trajectory toward and beyond survival. A theoretical framework integrating organizational learning (OL) and knowledge management in organizational transformation (OT) in complex crises is presented.

This conceptual paper presents a systematic literature review on OT in crisis from 2000 to 2021. To achieve integration, the authors searched for studies on OT, knowledge management and OL, each paired with a crisis.

Crises highlight the emergent and decentered nature of knowing and organizing. This study suggests that OT is achieved through various changes in organizational knowledge. Different learning modes enable the transformation of knowledge in a crisis: contextual or situated learning, strategic and collective integration.

The authors' pandemic experience may have influenced the analysis. This paper does not account for new types of learning emerging due to the influence of digital technologies.

Organizations may hasten renewal through distributed crisis management facilitated by contextual and strategic learning and collective integration.

This study categorizes learning, based on its function in crisis management, into three types: contextual learning for creative problem-solving, strategic learning for leadership and direction and collective integration to evaluate their crisis journey. Through this classification, this study sheds light on the types of knowledge needed to manage crises effectively, showing that organizations can leverage their crises by transforming and innovating themselves in this turbulent period.