Affiliation:
1. Department of Management and Engineering, Linköping University, Sweden
2. Department of Business Studies, Uppsala University, Sweden
Abstract
Digital transformation projects often fail due to tensions that emerge between temporary project teams set to design digital transformation and the permanent organization where digital transformation is to be executed. As a potential organizational response to such tensions, we introduce the notion of prototype work; in other words, the actions and interactions facilitated by making prototypes. Through a real-time longitudinal study of a digital transformation project in a Swedish manufacturing firm we specify prototype work, addressing strategic tensions, temporal tensions, and cross-functional tensions at different loci of temporary–permanent interfaces and, in turn, how both temporary and permanent organizations are transitioned.
Funder
VINNOVA
Swedish national research school in management and IT
Göteborgs nation in Uppsala