Research Projects

Deconstruct to Reconstruct: Strategic Leaders’ Sensemaking and Sensebreaking of Digital Transformation Challenges in Incumbent Firms. 

Lorenz, F., Diehl, M. R. & Buchwald, A.

Abstract: While mastering digital transformation is seen as critical for the survival of incumbent firms, the understanding of the strategic leader, the Chief Digital Officer (CDO), driving this organizational transformation is still quite limited. Previous research on the CDO has mostly focused on structures, configuration, and outcomes of the CDO role, but has provided little insight into how the strategic leader holding that CDO position views the environment and its challenges. This study draws on sensemaking theory to understand how CDOs construe their critical task – digital transformation – and consequent challenges in incumbent firms. We address this in a qualitative study, drawing on 53 expert interviews with CDOs. Our analysis shows that CDOs unanimously perceive digital transformation as a challenge of cultural change. Depending on the framing, CDOs adopt a different sensebreaking approach to digital transformation, namely a fighting, collaborating, and persuading approach. We extend the present understanding of digital transformation as a cultural challenge and contribute to theorizing on sensemaking, sensebreaking, and CDO literature.  

Claiming, Gaining, and Sustaining a New Top Management Team Role: Chief Digital Officers and Political Job Crafting. 

Lorenz, F., Diehl, M. R. & Buchwald, A.

Accepted at the AOM Conference 2022. In preparation for submission to the Journal of Vocational Behavior (VHB: A, ABS: 4, Impact factor: 12.082). 

Abstract: Chief Digital Officers (CDOs) are expected to fulfill a strategic role in the digital transformation strategy and its implementation. Research frequently attempts to measure the CDO’s functions and responsibilities. Still, we lack a coherent understanding of the extent and nature of the CDO role due to the need to delineate the scope of responsibilities and potential redundancies toward other IT executives. Based on 53 interviews with CDOs, we examine how strategic leaders engage in defining their jobs. Our analysis draws on job crafting theory as a theoretical lens. Insights on job crafting motives inform the internal perspective by focusing on their expectations. It is less known how strategic leaders deal with other organizational stakeholders' expectations and outside views on crafting their new roles. We identify contexts and practices we frame as the pressure to define a role narrative and political job crafting practices. Specifically, we reveal a change in existing power dynamics, a shift of perception, and an enhancement of job credibility as political job crafting practices. They help strategic leaders, particularly CDOs, to maneuver strategically and politically in the beginning and throughout their tenure to gain sufficient authority to execute their mission. In so doing, we extend the present understanding of job crafting as a political activity at the level of strategic leadership, specifically in the context of digital transformation.