EEU411 Leading in the Digital Age

• Topics

  Digital transformation implies an extensive organizational change driven and enabled by digital technologies. This could involve changes to the organization’s business processes, business model, or even a new organizational identity. Such organizational change affects employees in different ways and prompts changes to both leadership approaches and leadership roles, which we address in this module.

  The course consists of four main overarching topics:

  1.         Digital concepts and technologies.

  2.         Digital trends.

  3.         the Digital leader.

  4.         the Digital organization.

  The first day, we will uncover what we mean by phenomena such as digitization, digitalization, digital innovation, and digital transformation. We will discuss characteristics of digital technology and look at different examples and cases of how digital technologies could affect the way business is conducted.

  The second day, we will look at different "digital" trends, e.g., trends that drive changes in business models and are enabled by digital technologies, such as digital platform ecosystems, sharing economy, and sustainability.

  The third day, we will discuss what it implies to be a "digital leader", including leader attributes and new leader roles, as well as topics related to the responsibilities of the digital leader, such as developing a digital strategy and ensuring the organization’s digital maturity.

  The fourth day, we look at how digital transformation changes work design and leadership and discuss how employees might be affected in terms of competency requirements and digital technology adoption. 

• Learning outcome

  Upon completion of this course, the students can:

  Knowledge

  • identify relevant and recent research on digital transformation
  • name emerging digital technologies and digital technology-enabled trends
  • name important leader attributes and leader roles that are important for managing in a digital age

  Skills

  • analyse how emerging digital technologies and digital technology-enabled trends might enable organisational change
  • analyse an organisation’s current digital maturity
  • illustrate how digital transformation might affect employees in the organisation
  • illustrate how managers might support the employees during and after the digital transformation process
  • recommend measures leaders can take to increase the digital maturity

  General competence

  • understand digitalization, digital transformation, digital trends, and their effect on leadership 

• Teaching

  Online Sessions, 4 days:

  Friday February 23rd, 2024: 12pm-6pm: Digital concepts and technologies

  Saturday February 24th, 2024: 09am-3pm: Digital "trends" and cases

  Friday April 12th, 2024: 12pm-6pm: The digital leader

  Saturday April 13th, 2024: 09am-3pm: The digital organization

• Restricted access

  This course is part of the ENGAGE.EU Joint Programme in Digital Transformation. Access is restricted to matriculated students.

  The course is also offered as an Online Exchange Course to students from the ENGAGE.EU alliance (University of Mannheim, the University of Toulouse Capitole, LUISS University, Tilburg University, University of National and World Economy in Sofia, Vienna University of Economics and Busines, Ramon Llull University and Hanken School of Economics).

  Enrollment capacity is limited to 35 students in total.

• Assessment

  Participants’ grade will be composed of:

  • 40% Individual participation (individual grade)
  • 60% Group-based term paper (group grade)

  Individual participation (40%)

  40 % of the grade will be based on the student’s active participation in the course. This includes the student’s presence, participation in plenary and group discussions during the course, and sharing of own reflection.

  Group-based term paper (60%)

  60 % of the grade will be based on a term paper written in pre-defined groups of 2-4 students, where the groups can choose from different alternative assignments related to the topics addressed and literature presented in the course. More details on the topics and content of the alternative assignments will be announced during the course.

  The term paper should be written in English, and be approximately 15-20 pages, with 1.5 line spacing, Calibri pt.11 font, and normal margins. The assignment for the term paper will be announced in mid-April, and the students have approximately two months to hand in the term paper.

• Grading Scale

  A-F

• Literature

  Mandatory Readings:

  - Osmundsen, K., Iden, J., & Bygstad B. (2018) Digital transformation: Drivers, success factors, and implications. The 12th Mediterranean Conference on In-formation Systems (MCIS), Corfu, Greece, 2018

  - Schwarzmüller, T., Brosi, P., Duman, D., & Welpe, I. M. (2018). How does the digital transformation affect organizations? Key themes of change in work design and leadership. Management Revue, 29(2), 114-138.

  - von Ohain, B. P. (2019). Leader attributes for successful digital transfor-mation. International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) 2019 Pro-ceedings.

  - Singh, A., & Hess, T. (2017). How Chief Digital Officers Promote the Digital Transformation of their Companies. MIS Quarterly Executive, 16(1), 5.

  Complementary Readings:

  - Westerman, G., Tannou, M, Bonnet, D., Ferraris, P., & McAfee, A. (2012). The digital advantage: How digital leaders outperform their peers in every industry. MIT Sloan Management / Capgemini Consulting

  - Danilova, K., Iden, J., & Bygstad, B. (2022). Chief Digital Officers' Evolving Strategies: Balancing Lightweight and Heavyweight IT During the Digital Transformation. HICSS 2022

  - Osmundsen, K., Iden, J., & Bygstad B. (2019) Organizing Robotic Process Au-tomation: Balancing Loose and Tight Coupling. HICSS 2019

  - Osmundsen, K. (2020) Competences for Digital Transformation: Insights from the Norwegian Energy Sector. HICSS 2020

  - Bygstad, B., Iden, J., & Ulfsten, A. (2020). Digital Business Strategies for In-cumbent Firms. How a Scandinavian hotel chain competes with the internet giants. Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems, 32(2), 77-106

  - Meske, C., Osmundsen, K., Junglas, I. (2021) Designing and implementing digital twins in the energy grid sector. MIS Quarterly Executive, 20(3)

  - Gerwe, O., & Silva, R. (2020). Clarifying the sharing economy: Conceptualiza-tion, typology, antecedents, and effects. Academy of Management Perspec-tives, 34(1), 65-96.

  - Van Alstyne, M. W., Parker, G. G., & Choudary, S. P. (2016). Pipelines, plat-forms, and the new rules of strategy. Harvard business review, 94(4), 54-62.

  - Costabile, C., Iden, J., & Bygstad, B. (2022). Building digital platform ecosys-tems through standardization: an institutional work approach. Electronic Mar-kets, 1-13 

• This is an ENGAGE-course

  This course is part of the ENGAGE.EU Joint Programme in Digital Transformation. Access is restricted to matriculated students.

  The course is also offered as an Online Exchange Course to students from the ENGAGE.EU alliance (University of Mannheim, the University of Toulouse Capitole, LUISS University, Tilburg University, University of National and World Economy in Sofia, Vienna University of Economics and Busines, Ramon Llull University and Hanken School of Economics).