Abstract
The increasing digitalization of economies has highlighted the importance of digital transformation and how it can help businesses stay competitive in the market. However, disruptive changes not only occur at the company level; they also have environmental, societal, and institutional implications. This is the reason why during the past two decades the research on digital transformation has received growing attention, with a wide range of topics investigated in the literature. The following aims to provide insight regarding the current state of the literature on digital transformation (DT) by conducting a systematic literature review. An analysis of co-occurrence using the software VOSviewer was conducted to graphically visualize the literature’s node network. Approached this way, the systematic literature review displays major research avenues of digital transformation that consider technology as the main driver of these changes. This paper qualitatively classifies the literature on digital business transformation into three different clusters based on technological, business, and societal impacts. Several research gaps identified in the literature on DT are proposed as futures lines of research which could provide useful insights to the government and private sectors in order to adapt to the disruptive changes found in business as a result of this phenomenon, as well as to reduce its negative impacts on society and the environment.
Highlights
Globalization in recent decades has placed increasing pressure on businesses to change
Given the increasing importance of digital transformation (DT) and its effects on companies and societies, this paper provides an overview of the current state of the art in DT literature
The past decade and last 4 years, in particular, have seen an increase in the number of publications dedicated to DT
Summary
Globalization in recent decades has placed increasing pressure on businesses to change. The third section describes the three clusters found: digital business transformation—which is subdivided into two areas of research: business processes and organizational implications—, technology as a driver of DT and institutional and societal impacts. Conducting the co-occurrence analysis based on the keywords mentioned, the literature was divided into three clusters: digital business transformation (A), technology as a driver of DT (B), and institutional and societal implications (C). Digital transformation is the use of information and communication technology, not when trivial automation is performed, but in the case where fundamentally new capabilities are created in business, public government, and in the lives of people and society. The total of 39 articles was qualitatively arranged into clusters relating to their research on DT, and corresponding to a business, technological, and/or societal level of analysis. The term “transformation” comprises the understandability to take the required actions when organizations face new technologies; it is not to be confused with simple change (Singh & Hess, 2017)
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