Governance of Digital Transformation: A Review of the Literature

Abstract

Digital transformation (DT) has attracted increased attention across academia and practice, with recent work contributing to an improved understanding of this phenomenon. However, we lack a comprehensive view of how DT should be governed – how do organizational structures, processes, and relational mechanisms around DT decisions influence an organization’s ability to achieve its goals? With DT the focus of governance extends beyond just the decision rights and accountabilities of the information technology (IT) unit. Rather than 'just' being an organizational unit, technology is now core to the organization and its operations. This increases the scope to an organizational level of governance; therefore, traditional IT governance mechanisms may not apply as well to DT. This study provides a review of how the DT literature discusses governance, and identifies areas for future research.