A) As digitalization increasingly permeates all levels of society, the conditions, tools and challenges for contemporary organizing are changing. The course literature provides different (but interconnected) perspectives, explanations and analyses of the changing nature of organizing. Your task is to:
Explain the nexus of scale, scope, and speed, how it differs from previous conditions for organizing, and how it relates to the concept of “fast movers”.
Argue for how an organization can leverage digital platforms to become a fast mover.
Argue for what leadership capabilities and digital capabilities an organization should prioritize building in order to become a fast mover.
In order to pass, the student needs to:
Present the concepts of scale, scope, speed and their dynamics in a way that corresponds with that of the course literature.
Compare the nexus of scale, scope, and speed with previous conditions for organizing.
Present the concept of fast mover in a way that corresponds with that of the course literature.
Illustrate how the concept of fast movers logically follows from the conditions offered by the nexus of scale, scope, and speed.
Present relevant characteristics of digital platforms, their dynamics, and logic.
Present clear and grounded arguments to how and why digital platforms can be leveraged to become a fast mover.
Present clear and grounded arguments to which digital and leadership capabilities an organization should focus on and why when it wants to become a fast mover
B) Digital transformation includes more than just the implementation and use of new digital technology in an organization. It is often instigated and fueled by external influence and resources, it is driven and maintained by humans in the organization, and it ultimately leads to changes that extend beyond process improvements. Taking the perspective of incumbent companies (companies that are already well established and successful), and by grounding your answer in the course literature and other relevant research, your task is to:
Describe three factors related to the digitalization of the business and technology environments around incumbent companies and explain how and why they are likely to motivate or force them to engage in digital transformation.
Identify and explain key challenges that are particularly likely to manifest in the digital transformation of established and historically successful companies.
Apply relevant concepts from the course literature to discuss if and how incumbent organizations can avoid, mitigate, or manage these challenges.
In order to pass, the student needs to:
Identify and present three factors and explain how they are related to the digitalization of business and technology environments in a way that corresponds with that of the authors.
Present clear arguments for how and why the three factors are likely to initiate the digital transformation of incumbents.
Identify and argue for at least two different challenges that incumbent organizations face.
Clearly show how these challenges are likely to manifest in organizations that have been historically successful and are well established within an industry (rather than being e.g. start-ups).
Identify, and explain the relevance of, concepts related to how incumbent companies can manage the challenges of digital transformation in a way that corresponds with that of the authors.
Present the answer in a readable and comprehensible way.
C) Two books in the course literature present and prescribe ways for organizations to manage digitalization and digital transformation in useful ways. In order to make informed decisions as a manager of a digital enterprise of how to understand, evaluate, and potentially use different prescriptive statements, concepts, models or frameworks, a manager needs to be able to analyze core assumptions expressed as normative suggestions for action. Your task is to:
Analyze core assumptions related to digitalization, digital transformation, organization, organizing, and management expressed in Venkatraman (2017), and in Westerman et al. (2014).
Compare the books based on your analyses.
Evaluate which framework is most useful for a manager in a digital enterprise.
In order to pass, the student needs to:
Identify, evaluate and argue for concepts, models or frameworks that captures relevant aspects of digitalization, digital transformation, organization, organizing and management on an appropriate level for the subsequent analyses.
Operationalize the concepts to a sufficient and actionable degree.
Apply the concepts to the material in a logical and coherent way that is consistent with their definitions.
Present the results of the two analyses.
Evaluate similarities and differences between the core assumptions in the two books.
Based on the comparison, develop strong argument for the usefulness of the different books in the setting of digital enterprise management.
Present the answer in a readable and comprehensible way
