Premises of Digital Transformation in Autopoietic Organizations

Abstract

This chapter exposes how the realization of digital transformation (DT) derives from the decisional communication of rule-making “chosen” alternatives, which originate in the self-referenced informational space, according to the dual perspective of reality adopted in evolutionary economics. Based on a critical analysis of scholarly literature to identify key proposals that support the definition of DT strategies, this research establishes the relevance of the fundamental tenets of autopoiesis theory, such as operational closure, structural coupling, and languaging, in the context of digitalization, to harmonize such DT strategy proposals to the structure of the organization in terms of decision premises. The internal availability of these decision premises determines the type of digitalization potential that can be self-observed by the organization, reinterpreting the attributes of DT in a framework that recognizes the sets of DT alternatives as decision premise dichotomies, with implications for theory and practice.