Sociotechnical leadership for the digital transformation of global corporations

Abstract

Literature assumes that leaders can successfully implement transformation like strategic changes by leading the social systems with the desired behaviors while the technological behaviors are of minute nature. Meanwhile, the thesis of our paper is that the wide-scale and diverse nature of digital transformation requires that leaders must learn socio-technical behaviors. We conducted a grounded theory-based pilot case study with twelve leaders of digital transformation from four large multinational corporations in energy, forestry, and mobility businesses. The thematic analysis of our data reveals eight socio-technical behaviors. We grouped these behaviors into the social, technical, ecosystem, and organizational design of traditional industrial organizations.

Keywords: Sociotechnical, leadership, behaviors, case study, industrial organization

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1006321