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Article

Research on Digital Transformation Based on Complex Systems: Visualization of Knowledge Maps and Construction of a Theoretical Framework

by
Xiurui Xu
,
Guangming Hou
and
Junpeng Wang
*
School of Management and Economics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Sustainability 2022, 14(5), 2683; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14052683
Submission received: 13 December 2021 / Revised: 20 February 2022 / Accepted: 23 February 2022 / Published: 25 February 2022
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Abstract

:
In the digital age, the exploration of digital transformation has made remarkable progress in many fields. However, the existing theories related to digital transformation at the organizational level are relatively scattered, which makes it difficult to support the practical exploration of organizational change in the digital context. Through quantitative and visual analysis of the literature in the field of digital transformation, this study analyzes the research situation in this field from the aspects of the paper publishing trend, node literature, key scholars and regional cooperation. Through the analysis of the keywords co-occurrence network, the research frontier of digital transformation is identified, and, based on complex systems, this study discusses the research frontier from three aspects: organizational symbiosis oriented by environmental coordination, ability remodeling oriented by structural optimization and value creation oriented by functional realization. Further, based on the analysis framework and principle of organizational management systematics, this study constructs the theoretical framework of digital transformation from three aspects: core dimension, implementation mechanism and action mechanism. The systematic theoretical framework can provide reference for the development of relevant theories of digital transformation and better support the management practice of digital transformation.

1. Introduction

In recent years, with the development of digital information technology, enterprise organization has undergone drastic changes in structure and production mode. COVID-19 has swept the world and accelerated the digitalization process of all sectors of society [1]. In China, especially in May 2020, the National Development and Reform Commission issued the “digital transformation partnership action” initiative to help the digital transformation of small, medium sized and micro enterprises. In August of the same year, the State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission issued the notice on accelerating the digital transformation of state owned enterprises, encouraging the exploration of the realization path and theoretical mechanism of digital transformation. With the acceleration of the digitalization process [2], enterprises are urgently exploring the path of organizational transformation through the application of digital information technology represented by big data, cloud computing and artificial intelligence, so as to obtain sustainable competitive advantage. However, even though digital transformation has been put into practice in many fields, such as medical treatment, banking, computer, education, media publishing, energy and government information, there has not been a widely recognized research framework of the relevant theories used to guide or analyze the process of organizational digital transformation.
As one of the important phenomena studied by strategic information systems [3], digital transformation has attracted the extensive attention of scholars from all over the world. Especially for the empirical research related to digital transformation, many concepts have been widely discussed, for example, the readiness or maturity of companies [4]. There are many evaluation models for the maturity or readiness of intelligent manufacturing and industry 4.0 [5]. The calculation of these specific indicators has greatly promoted the research of industry 4.0 and intelligent manufacturing. However, the scope of industry 4.0 or intelligent manufacturing is different from digital transformation [6], which also means that the system framework is not universal. In order to realize the sustainable development of organizations, the research on specific fields of digital transformation has also attracted the extensive attention of scholars in the field of management and business, especially the empirical testing of the relationship between digital transformation and organizational resilience [7], organizational performance [8] and technological innovation [9].
Scholars actively explore the meaning of digital transformation at different levels, such as individual, organization [10] and society [11,12]. In the development process of the concept of digital transformation, representative studies are shown in Table 1. From focusing on the application of digital information technology [13] to focusing on the transformation of a value creation path [14], the concept of digital transformation is gradually unifying. Existing studies generally show that digital transformation is not the simple application of a single exponential technology, but also includes the strategic and organizational changes brought about by the application of digital technology, especially the changes in organizational structure [15], operation process [16] and organizational culture [17], as well as the ability to develop an innovative value creation path derived therefrom [18]. Although the concept of digital transformation is widely used, we still lack a comprehensive understanding of it [19].
In order to better explore digital transformation, some scholars have tried to establish academic frameworks of digital transformation at the level of organization and management. For example, Matt et al. proposed a digital transformation framework to support firms in the assessment of their current abilities and the formulation of a digital transformation strategy, which includes four dimensions: use of technologies, changes in value creation, structural changes, and financial aspects [19]. Gregory Vial proposed an inductive framework summarizing current knowledge on digital transformation, which includes the eight building blocks of the digital transformation process, and urged the contribution of dynamic capabilities as the basis for the study of digital transformation [20]. Sascha Kraus et al. established a framework relating digital transformation to the areas of business and management, which are driven by work that takes an internal perspective on dynamic capabilities, as well as an external perspective on structural change and value creation [21]. The academic frameworks of digital transformation are more inclined towards technology adoption and personal use behavior, even though a few attempts have been made to apply those frameworks from an organizational point of view [22]. These frameworks have laid the foundation for the research in the field of digital transformation, but, in the context of complex systems, we have not formed a systematic theoretical analysis framework in the field of digital transformation at the organizational level.
The academic discussion on the phenomenon of digital transformation involves many aspects, such as social sustainable development, enterprise supply chain optimization, organizational dynamic capability formation, urban services and innovation. In order to further enrich the research on digital transformation and support digital transformation activities at the organizational system level, it is urgent to systematically analyze the research frontier, evolution context and theoretical framework of relevant research in the field of digital transformation [23]. The outlines of a systematic review developed by Tranfield et al. [24] and Kraus et al. [21] inspired us to standardize the process of the systematic analysis of articles in the field of digital transformation. We planned the review through identifying the need to carry out a systematic review and develop a review protocol, identify and evaluate studies, extract and synthesize data and disseminate the review findings by forming a systematic theoretical framework. Specifically, based on the bibliometric analysis, this study draws the knowledge map of digital transformation, summarizes and analyzes the key literature shown by the literature analysis results, and constructs a systematic theoretical framework of digital transformation as a map of theory in this field, according to the literature review.

2. Research Methods and Data Sources

2.1. Research Methods

The method of knowledge mapping is used to visualize the literature in the field of digital transformation. In library and information science, it is called knowledge domain mapping. It is a series of different charts to show the relationship between the process and structure of knowledge development [25]. Knowledge mapping is the main method of bibliometric visualization, which can comprehensively analyze the research status in various fields, identify cutting-edge hotspots and explore development trends [26,27]. Citespace has the advantages of fast processing speed, good visualization effects and strong readability in data analysis [28]. In this study, Citespace software is used for bibliometric analysis and visual presentation in the field of digital transformation.
The analytical framework provided by organizational management systematics is used to construct the system theoretical framework through the literature review of key literature. Organizational management systematics is a new theoretical system derived from complexity science and systems science, researches from the perspective of organizational management systematics and is mainly published in Chinese journals. The analytical framework with complexity science and systems science [29] as the ideological source has played an important role in the research of digital transformation even at the individual level [30]. Organizational management systematics is also developed on the basis of complexity science and systems science. Prof. Hou Guangming emphasized that the research of organizational management systems should take into account the integrity, connection, adaptability, complexity and development of organizational management [31], and put forward a system analysis framework composed of three dimensions: environment, structure and function [32]. The digital transformation process of an organization involves all aspects inside and outside the organization. It is a systematic project that dynamically integrates elements at all levels in order to achieve sustainable development. Therefore, digital transformation is suitable for research with the theoretical logic of the organizational management systematics.

2.2. Data Sources

This research is based on the core databases of Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-Expanded) and Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) in the web of science database. By searching “digital transformation” through subject words (including title, abstract, keywords and keyword extension), setting the time span to “1900–2020”, setting the document type to “article”, setting the language type to “English”, and setting the web of science category to “management”, “business”, “information science library science” “computer science information systems”, “engineering industrial”, “economics”, “society” and other sub categories, we finally retrieve 410 articles on 2 June 2021.
Through data cleaning, one duplicate document is eliminated. In addition, before bibliometric analysis and visual analysis, the data are further cleaned by reading the titles and abstracts of 410 documents: the documents that include digital transformation but do not include digital transformation as the main research content are excluded. After carefully reading the title and abstract, three articles are excluded, including one article on research infrastructure construction published in 2015, one review on specific fields published in 2018, and one short paper on system concepts published in 2020. Finally, 406 articles are obtained for bibliometric analysis and visual presentation.
According to the results of bibliometric analysis and visual presentation, we further review the key literature highlighted in the previous stage, and construct the systematic theoretical framework for the digital transformation. Then, we further relate the framework with the established data set for detailed discussion. Figure 1 shows the roadmap of this research.

3. Overview of Digital Transformation Research

Through the statistical analysis of the publication year, cited frequency, source journals, author information, national and regional information of the literature in the field of digital transformation, and the visual presentation of the literature co-citation network, cooperation network and keywords co-occurrence network, we can identify the publication trend, main publishing platforms, node literature, key scholars and regional cooperation.

3.1. Trends in Paper Publication

In the constructed literature data set, the earliest paper on digital transformation was published in 2003. By analyzing the number of annual documents published in the field of digital transformation from 2003 to 2020, we can judge the development of this field as a whole and understand the changes in scholars’ attention to this field. According to the data derived from the analysis tool provided by web of science, we can draw the change diagram of the annual number of documents published and the annual frequency of documents cited, as shown in Figure 2. It can be seen that the annual number of documents issued in the field of digital transformation continued to grow from 2003 to 2020, especially from 2017 to 2020, which reflects the accelerating exploration process of digital transformation in the theoretical circle. At the same time, the annual total cited frequency in the field of digital transformation also has a similar change trend to the number of documents. The two sets of data jointly show the high attention of all sectors of society to the field of digital transformation in recent years.

3.2. Publications and Node Literature

The literature in the field of digital transformation retrieved by this research involves 176 journal publishing platforms, of which the top 10 journals are shown in Table 2, accounting for 27.6% of the total. In addition, the Strategic Management Journal, the top journal in the field of strategic management, published the first article on digital transformation in this journal in 2020. This article analyzes the power mechanism of the construction of the new digital platform through the strategic choice taken by Cisco in the process of digital transformation [33].
The documents in the field of digital transformation retrieved in this study have been cited 5752 times (as of the retrieval date). The top ten key node documents cited are shown in Table 3. These documents have played an important role in promoting the development of the research field of digital transformation. Among them, a review article on digital transformation in the medical field published in Information Systems Research in 2010 has 316 citations, and an article on the application mode of industry 4.0 technology in manufacturing published in International Journal of Production Economics in 2019 has 248 citations. It can be seen that, with the development and application of emerging technologies, digital transformation has changed from a focused discussion in specific industrial fields to a more universal research topic.
The Citespace software is further used to draw the literature co-citation network (the length of time slice for visual analysis is 1 year, we select the literature with the top 10% of co-occurrence times in each time slice for calculation, and the maximum number of literature in each time slice is set to 100), as shown in Figure 3. There are eight papers that appear more than 20 times in the citation information of this data set. The first three papers are Bharadwaj’s papers on digital business strategy [3], Matt’s papers on digital transformation strategy [19] and Porter’s papers on how intelligent products change competition [34]. These documents have gradually brought the basic topics of digital transformation, such as digital technology, digital products and digital services, into a wider range of organizational management research.

3.3. Key Scholars and Country Distribution of Research Results

The literature in the field of digital transformation retrieved in this study involves 1112 authors, of which the top 10 authors are shown in Table 4. Among them, Professor Thomas Hess from the University of Munich in Germany has published seven articles on digital transformation, ranking first. In addition, there are 5 authors with 3 articles and 64 authors with 2 articles (only the top 4 by name listed in the table). From the countries where the research institutions are located, most of these authors come from some European countries, especially Germany.
The authors of documents in the field of digital transformation are distributed among 65 countries. Statistics are made based on the distribution of countries to which corresponding authors belong, and Figure 4 is drawn in combination with the international co-operation of countries in papers in the field of digital transformation. It can be seen that Germany has the largest number of papers published by corresponding authors, followed by the United States, followed by Italy, Britain and Spain, and China ranks sixth. In terms of international cooperation, Germany has far more noninternational co-operation papers (SCPS) in the field of digital transformation than other countries, while China has relatively few noninternational cooperation papers (SCPS). Combined with the national (or regional) co-operation network shown in Figure 5, it can be judged that Germany is at the core of the research in the field of digital transformation.

4. Frontier Analysis of Digital Transformation Research

Using Citespace software to analyze the keyword co-occurrence of documents in the field of digital transformation, 10 clusters can be obtained, as shown in Figure 6. In the clustering timeline, the horizontal timeline represents the time when the nodes appear, the nodes on the timeline are keywords, and the phrases guided by the # number vertically are the clustering labels precipitated by the software according to the LLR algorithm according to the subject information such as title, keyword and summary. There are 10 clusters of keywords in the literature in the field of digital transformation, followed by digital transformation, digital economy, public service, value proposition, business ecosystem, big data, platform logic, smart manufacturing, related challenge, and IoT system.
To further analyze the specific contents of each cluster, a content analysis of the articles related to keywords was carried out using the key contents of the building blocks of the digital transformation process proposed by Gregory Vial [20] as the basis of the content analysis. In explaining the process framework, Gregory Vial mentioned that digital technologies alone provide little value to an organization, and the real role of digital technologies within a specific context is to enable a firm to uncover new ways to create value. He also proposed that structural changes are required for changing the value creation process, and inertia and resistance in some capabilities or resources can hinder the unfolding of an organization’s value creation in the process of digital transformation (conversely, there are also dynamic capabilities that can promote organizational digital transformation). Based on the analysis of the co-occurrence network and the interpretation of each cluster and its structure, three thematic areas could be determined: structural changes, the opposition of organizational barriers, and changes in value creation paths. Specifically, articles related to keywords contained in the cluster of digital economy, public service, business ecosystem, related challenge and IoT system can be classified as research about the change in organizational form in the context of digital transformation [14,35,36,37,38], articles related to keywords contained in the cluster of business ecosystem, big data, platform logic, and smart manufacturing can be classified as research about the remodeling of organizational capacities [39,40,41,42], and articles related to keywords contained in the cluster of value proposition, business ecosystem and platform logic can be classified as research about the creation of organizational value [33,43,44,45]. Combined with content analysis, we finally named these three thematic areas as symbiosis of organization, reconstruction of capabilities and value creation (see Table 5 for details). In addition, in following sections, we will discuss these three thematic areas and their contents, respectively.

4.1. Symbiosis of Organization

Digital transformation regards environmental elements with digital characteristics as the symbiotic object of the organization. The enterprise ecosystem with the co-ordinated development of the elements of the organization and the environment as the main research content has become a research hotspot in the field of digital transformation. On the one hand, the significant development of information and communication technology has contributed to the prosperity of the digital economy. The retail industry [35] and manufacturing industry [36] show a new development trend through the application of emerging technologies such as big data, cloud computing, blockchain, Internet of things and artificial intelligence, providing case data for studying how organizations coexist with other environmental elements in the ecosystem under the background of digital economy. On the other hand, the initiatives of e-governments [14] and smart cities [37] make the interaction interface between the government and the people more complex and diverse. Organizations need to connect more efficiently with the public service departments in the enterprise ecosystem through digital transformation. In addition, increasingly severe global challenges, such as climate change and the COVID-19 outbreak [38], make the external environment of organizations worse, and also test the risk resisting ability of organizations. Organizations needs to re-examine their relationship with other environmental factors in the process of digitalization transformation, and resist the environmental pressure brought by the worsening environment through systematic regulation.

4.2. Reconstruction of Capabilities

In the process of the continuous promotion of economic and social digital transformation, the source of competitive advantage and consumption behavior also change. Organizations need to take a series of measures to optimize their organizational structure to reshape the organization’s ability of opportunity perception, resource integration and resource reconstruction [39]. In terms of opportunity perception, the development of emerging technologies, such as big data and cloud computing, has laid a foundation for organizations to develop digital investigation capabilities and carry out digital scene planning. Formal and informal networks will provide more three dimensional decision-making information for organizations’ strategic planning. Building digital thinking is an important aspect of organizations’ ability to reshape opportunity perception in digital scenes [40]. In terms of resource integration, an organization, under the premise of maintaining the established strategic direction, applies its own products and services to digital scenes, such as the IoT system, through a digital investment portfolio, adjusting the pace of strategic action in practice, and improving organizational strategic agility [41]. In terms of resource reconstruction, how to improve the digital maturity of human resources, realize the dynamic management of the internal structure of the organization and improve the innovation ecosystem dominated by the concept of competition and co-operation [42] has become an important topic of digital transformation.

4.3. Value Creation

Organizational strategy in the digital context requires organizations to abandon the traditional business model, formulate strategic plans to adapt to environmental changes around established functional objectives, and then create new value. Value creation in digital transformation should correspond to the demands of the times of industrial reform, conform to the platform logic of collaborative innovation, and find the positioning that can realize the organizational function in the new value chain. In the era of using information and communication technology [43] to promote industrial change, the emergence of new concepts such as intelligent manufacturing and digital services has subverted the value cognition of the industry. The core of organizational transformation should be to find a new path of value creation [44]. Horizontally, the traditional competition mode or co-operation mode makes it difficult to support the development of organizational digital transformation. Co-operative competition has become a new innovation paradigm. Organizations will rely more on the platform interface of co-operative competition. The platform logic [33] will help organizations explore new value creation paths. Vertically, once an organization has formed a certain digital application scenario, it should determine its value orientation in the new value chain. As opposed to the traditional organizational value proposition, the value proposition [45] in the digital transformation strategy should not only meet the realization of its own functions, but also conform to the platform value and emphasize the cocreation of value.

5. Construction of Theoretical Framework of Digital Transformation

The digital transformation of enterprise organizations is a complex, dynamic and long term strategy formulation and implementation process. With the rapid development and application of information and communication technology, environmental dynamics have increased significantly [46]. The traditional strategy formulation and implementation mode makes it difficult to support enterprises to maintain their competitive advantage in a highly dynamic environment [47]. Digital transformation has become an inevitable trend for enterprises to survive. Using the document co-citation analysis function of Citespace software, the co-citation network diagram of documents in the field of digital transformation can be drawn and clustered (all cited documents are at this node). As shown in Figure 7, the # leading phrase in the figure is the cluster name of the co-citation network, and the arrow is the guide line, which can help to observe the direction of the cluster evolution. It can be seen from the cluster diagram that the evolution direction of documents in the field of digital transformation is relatively scattered, and there is no clear context in the evolution process, indicating that the field of digital transformation lacks systematic system framework support, which hinders the benign development of relevant theories in the field of digital transformation.
The relevant theories of digital transformation need to answer questions such as what is digital transformation, how to carry out digital transformation, and the boundary conditions of digital transformation. A systematic theoretical framework will help the better development of digital transformation theory. Organizational management systematics is a theoretical system for the study of human oriented, complex, open, giant systems [32], which specifically refers to the organic whole of the function of “managing humans well” and “managing things well” in a certain environment by giving full play to humans’ initiative and enthusiasm, connecting various elements with the help of organizational structure, culture and other structural forms, and making internal and external elements interact with each other in the form of “input–conversion–output”. Once we take organizational symbiosis, capabilities reconstruction and value creation into account, the digital transformation of an organization will become a management process of a complex open giant system, because no matter what the scale of the organization itself, the digital transformation of an organization must involve the transformation of elements, subsystems, systems and supersystems (environment). Therefore, the systematic problems involved in digital transformation are suitable to be studied from the perspective of organizational management systematics. By reading the classic literature in the field of digital transformation in detail, and using the analysis framework and basic principles from the perspective of organizational management systematics, this study summarizes the core dimensions, implementation mechanism and action mechanism of digital transformation, and further constructs the theoretical framework of digital transformation (as shown in Figure 8). In this theoretical framework, vertically, the symbiosis of organization, reconstruction of capability and value creation in the implementation mechanism column have a certain causal relationship in logic, and also include the commonly used constructs in the construction of middle level theory in the field of digital transformation; horizontally, the dimensions of environmental synergy, structural optimization and functional realization systematically show the main levels involved in the existing research. The horizontal boxes, consisting of complexity, implementation mechanism and entirety, are a potential logic for analyzing the digital transformation. For example, the digitization of economy and society promotes the complexity of organizational management (the relationship between organization and employees, demand and supply, competition and co-operation has been changed), which requires the organization to form a certain degree of symbiosis in leadership thinking, corporate culture and business ecosystem according to its industry status and innovation strategy, so as to achieve synergy with the environment (as shown in Figure 8).

5.1. Core Dimension

The development starting point of the concept of digital transformation is the impact of information and communication technologies such as big data [48], cloud computing [49], Internet of things [50] and artificial intelligence [51] on society and economy. The application of information and communication technologies has a far-reaching impact on an organization’s structure, culture and operation. The concept of digital transformation finally comes down to the path for enterprises to create new value and innovative value in the digital situation. From the perspective of environment, structure and function, enterprises carry out digital transformation in order to coordinate with the environment, optimize their own structure and realize their own functions, so as to obtain competitive advantage in the digital situation. Environmental coordination, structural optimization and function realization are an integrated system goal, and the connection, adaptability and development of digital transformation determine that digital transformation is a complex task. In order to achieve the overall goal in a complex task, it is necessary to identify the core dimensions of the task, to sort out a clearer theoretical logic.

5.1.1. The Dimension of Environmental Synergy

The environmental synergy dimension of digital transformation is the organizational symbiosis based on the connection of digital transformation. The connection of digital transformation is mainly reflected in the changes in the connection between organization and employees [52], demand and supply [53], competition and co-operation [54] in the digital context. In the digital age, the employment methods are more flexible, the office scenes are more diversified, and the employees show more personal independence. The traditional relationship between employee goals and organizational goals is no longer absolutely applicable, and the advantages of symbiotic relationship are gradually highlighted. The traditional relationship between demand and supply has also changed with the development of the digital era. Enterprises are more likely to obtain the demand information feedback of end users in the digital situation. Enterprises should not only arrange production and services to meet the current demand, but actively explore the potential demands of users. The boundary between traditional competition and co-operation has also become blurred in the digital age. Competitors in the digital age often emerge unexpectedly, and the industry boundary is constantly dynamic and blurred. In order to deal with this change, competition and co-operation is the best choice in the digital age. Based on the changes in the above three main links, enterprise organizations need to form a symbiotic relationship with the internal and external environment of the organization in order to achieve synergy with the environment.

5.1.2. The Dimension of Structural Optimization

The structural optimization dimension of digital transformation is ability remodeling based on the adaptability of digital transformation. The adaptability of digital transformation is mainly reflected in the improvement of opportunity identification ability, resource integration ability and resource reconstruction ability [17]. The internal and external environment of enterprises is more turbulent in the digital era. The resources that support enterprises to obtain traditional core competitive advantages often hinder the further development of enterprises. The digital transformation of enterprises goes far beyond the imagination of traditional functional thinking. In order to seek a new path to obtain competitive advantage, the digital transformation of enterprises needs to comprehensively consider the comprehensive actions that must be taken to take advantage of the opportunities or avoid threats brought by digitization. Enterprises need to establish strong dynamic capabilities, accurately perceive opportunities and integrate resources to seize opportunities, reconstruct resources to transform business models, and then adapt to the rapid changes in the environment in the digital economy.

5.1.3. The Dimension of Function Realization

The functional realization dimension of digital transformation is value creation based on the adaptability of digital transformation. The purpose of digital transformation is to form a sustainable competitive advantage in the digital context through innovative organizational change [8]. The development of digital transformation is mainly reflected in the feasibility and rationality of enterprises in the digital era, whether in the form of transition or gradual development. In addition to the extensive connections and accelerated dynamic changes, the data economy is highly tolerant compared with the traditional economic form. Digital economy is not an all round subversion of the traditional economy, but an economic form with a new format and new model developed based on the dual strategic base of traditional economy and digital information technology. Enterprises in it can not only create a new value creation mode and realize leap forward development, but can also use digitization to improve the existing value creation mode and change to a more stable state [55]. Taking the optimal development scheme under various constraints is the basic criterion of digital transformation.

5.2. Implementation Mechanism

The digital transformation of enterprises is a transformation process of common transformation in the three dimensions of environment, structure and function [32]. This transformation process will break through the limitations of functions and departments, and deal with the complex changes and opportunities brought about by digitization from the perspective of the integrity of the organizational system [56]. Based on the connection of digital transformation, enterprises need to achieve synergy with the environment through organizational symbiosis. Based on the adaptability of digital transformation, enterprises need to reshape and optimize the organizational structure through capability. Based on the development of digital transformation, enterprises need to achieve the goal of function realization through value creation. The logical relationship between organizational symbiosis, capability remodeling and value creation will also become the main logical line of the theoretical framework of digital transformation: organizational symbiosis is the premise of capability remodeling, capability remodeling has an important impact on value creation, and value creation will further strengthen the demand for organizational symbiosis.

5.2.1. Environmental Synergy Is the Premise of Reconstruction of Capabilities

Organizational symbiosis guided by environmental synergy includes not only the symbiosis between enterprises and external organizations [57], but also the symbiosis between enterprises and internal employees [58], which requires enterprises to actively reflect the symbiotic value of the digital era from the aspects of leadership thinking, organizational culture and business system. Cultivating leaders’ symbiotic thinking [30], building an organization’s symbiotic culture and building a business ecosystem are the key to realizing organizational symbiosis. The internal and external network built by organizational symbiosis can help enterprises identify opportunity information more quickly and integrate internal and external resources more efficiently, so that enterprises can change their business model in time, which is the premise for enterprises to reshape their ability in digitization. By building an agile organizational structure and paying attention to the reasonable integration of traditional processes and digital technology in business layouts, enterprises can make employees play a more flexible role in the organization and better reshape their ability in digitization.

5.2.2. Effect of Reconstruction of Capabilities on Value Creation

The capabilities reconstruction of enterprise digital transformation [59] focuses on the construction of strong organizational dynamic capabilities, so as to enable enterprises to adapt to a more turbulent environment [17], and its most fundamental purpose is to enable enterprises to create new value and innovate the path of value creation [60]. Value creation in the digital age should start with new value proposition, new value network and new value platform. The value proposition conveys the value advantages of products or services. Digitization enables enterprises to be closer to users and adjust their value proposition by identifying user needs or creating new needs. The enterprise’s digital value network connects user demand with flexible, efficient and low cost manufacturing; compresses the distribution layer of the industrial chain by using digital information technology; and cooperates with cooperative suppliers to better deliver customized solutions; greatly shortens the time lag effect of the supply chain in conveying demand; and reduces the prediction deviation of enterprises to the market, so as to adapt to the continuous changes. Different from the traditional value proposition, digital enterprises pay more attention to platform value. To create or join a new symbiotic and win–win value platform is to better realize their own value proposition and increase the platform value at the same time.

5.2.3. Feedback from Value Creation to Symbiosis of Organization

The value creation of enterprise digitization focuses on creating new value or an innovative value innovation path through the contact with users, business partners and competitors. The result of digital value creation will also make the platform system formed by organizational symbiosis more legitimate [61]. To a certain extent, the positive feedback of value creation on organizational symbiosis is not only the necessary condition for an organization to form a symbiotic relationship with internal and external environmental factors, but also the best defense against risks and threats. The digital transformation mechanism with organizational symbiosis, capability remodeling and value creation as the main contents has realized the systematic change of enterprise organization and management in the process of mutual circulation among the three.

5.3. Action Mechanism

The digital age has the characteristics of VUCA, that is, it has volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity. The transformation of enterprises in the digital age should take appropriate measures [62] according to their own conditions, endowments and actual situations. In a specific operation, the conditional endowment, with industry status as the main content, and the actual situation, with innovation path as the main content, regulate the realization process of enterprise digital transformation to a great extent [63]. Under the traditional competition mode, the industry status of enterprises is mainly divided into leaders, challengers, followers and niche. In the digital transformation, due to the increasingly fierce competition, distinguishing the industry status of enterprises by incumbent enterprises [64] and late developing enterprises is more conducive for enterprises to maintain a clear understanding of the impact of competition and adopt an appropriate way of digital transformation. What kind of innovation path through which to integrate into the digital age is the actual situation that enterprises need to deal with [44]. The application of digital information technology and the popularization of platform networks have laid the foundation for enterprises to choose an innovation path, while an exploratory innovation path and utilization innovation path have different effects on the process of enterprise digital transformation. The exploratory innovation path determines that enterprises will achieve leapfrog development through more radical value innovation, while the exploitative innovation path will guide enterprises to carry out progressive development by improving the path of value proposition and value creation. In the management practice, the case of Cisco creating a digital platform can provide us with examples [33]. When Cisco was a latecomer, it adopted the exploitative innovation strategy to approach the core of the platform ecosystem. When it had accumulated certain resources, Cisco adopted the exploratory innovation strategy to establish a new platform and become the platform leader.

6. Conclusions

Relevant research in the field of digital transformation has sprung up in recent years. There is a strong demand for digital transformation research in various countries, especially in Europe under the background of industry 4.0, which has played an important guiding role in the early development of the field of digital transformation. In China, digital transformation has made great progress in the fields of medical treatment, finance, education, media publishing and so on, and has accumulated rich practical experience. However, the existing research is relatively scattered, which makes it difficult to support the next development of digital transformation research. Based on the analytical framework and principles of organizational management systematics, and based on a detailed review of the research frontiers related to digital transformation, such as sustainable development, open innovation, dynamic capability, supply chain and public services, this study constructs a new systematic theoretical framework and discusses it from three core dimensions: environmental coordination, structural optimization and function realization. This study analyzes its realization mechanism from the three processes of organizational symbiosis, capability remodeling and value creation, and emphasizes the important impact of the industry status and innovation path of the enterprise on the digital transformation. Compared with the frameworks proposed by other scholars, the framework presented in the present study has superiority in the following three aspects, to make the analysis of organizational digital transformation more systematic. Firstly, the framework abstracts and summarizes the changes brought about by digital technology as the increase in complexity at the organizational level, which makes the cross-level topic become a single organizational level topic. Secondly, the framework takes dynamic capabilities as the core of the organizational digital transformation mechanism, which effectively reveals the basis of organizational digital transformation. Thirdly, the framework emphasizes the differences in the digital transformation of organizations with different innovation characteristics and industrial statuses in the dimensions of environment, structure and function, which enables a deeper understanding of the types of digital transformation at the organizational level. However, the theoretical framework only provides reference for follow-up research on the basis of combing the existing literature. The far-reaching impact of digital transformation on the management system of enterprise organizations needs the continuous follow-up of scientific researchers, and the research framework will be verified and improved based on qualitative and quantitative analysis in future research.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, X.X. and G.H.; methodology, G.H.; software, X.X.; validation, J.W.; formal analysis, J.W.; investigation, X.X.; resources, X.X.; data curation, X.X.; writing—original draft preparation, X.X.; writing—review and editing, J.W.; visualization, X.X.; supervision, J.W.; project administration, G.H.; funding acquisition, G.H. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Funding

This research was funded by the Major Project of Beijing Social Science Fund of China under Grant No.18ZDA02.

Institutional Review Board Statement

Not applicable.

Informed Consent Statement

Not applicable.

Data Availability Statement

The data presented in this study are available on request from the corresponding author.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Figure 1. The roadmap of this research.
Figure 1. The roadmap of this research.
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Figure 2. Annual number of documents issued and annual total cited frequency of digital transformation.
Figure 2. Annual number of documents issued and annual total cited frequency of digital transformation.
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Figure 3. Co-citation network map of literature in the field of digital transformation.
Figure 3. Co-citation network map of literature in the field of digital transformation.
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Figure 4. Distribution of countries and international cooperation of literature correspondents in the field of digital transformation. (Note: MCP refers to international co-operation papers and SCP refers to noninternational co-operation papers).
Figure 4. Distribution of countries and international cooperation of literature correspondents in the field of digital transformation. (Note: MCP refers to international co-operation papers and SCP refers to noninternational co-operation papers).
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Figure 5. National (or regional) co-operation network in the field of digital transformation.
Figure 5. National (or regional) co-operation network in the field of digital transformation.
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Figure 6. Document keywords co-occurrence network clustering timeline in the field of digital transformation.
Figure 6. Document keywords co-occurrence network clustering timeline in the field of digital transformation.
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Figure 7. Co-citation network clustering of documents in the field of digital transformation.
Figure 7. Co-citation network clustering of documents in the field of digital transformation.
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Figure 8. Diagrammatic sketch of systematic theoretical framework of digital transformation.
Figure 8. Diagrammatic sketch of systematic theoretical framework of digital transformation.
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Table
Table 1. Representative digital transformation concept.
Table 1. Representative digital transformation concept.
Concept DefinitionAuthor (Year)
Use technology to fundamentally improve the performance or influence of enterprises.Westerman et al. (2011)
Digital technologies (seen as a combination of information, computing, communication and connectivity technologies) are fundamentally changing business strategies, business processes, corporate capabilities, products and services, and expanding key inter-enterprise relationships in business networks.Bharadwaj et al. (2013)
Use new digital technologies (social media, mobile, analytics, or embedded devices) to achieve significant business improvements (such as enhancing the customer experience, simplifying operations, or creating new business models).Fitzgerald et al. (2014)
The digital transformation strategy is a blueprint that supports the transformation of enterprise management due to the integration of computing intelligence technology and the operation after transformation.Matt et al. (2015)
Digital transformation refers to the changes brought about by computing intelligence technology to the business model of enterprises. These changes will lead to changes in product or organizational structure, or process automation. These changes can be seen from the growing demand for Internet based media, which has led to changes in the whole business model (e.g., in the music industry).Hess et al. (2016)
Use new digital technologies such as social media, mobile, analytics, or embedded devices to achieve significant business improvements such as enhancing the customer experience, simplifying operations, or creating new business models.Singh et al. (2017)
Digital transformation is the process of improving entities by triggering significant changes in entity attributes through the combination of information, computing, communication and connectivity technologies.Vial et al. (2019)
Digital transformation is a fundamental change process realized by computing intelligence technology, which aims to bring fundamental improvement and innovation to entities (for example, an organization, a business network, an industry, or society) and create value for their stakeholders through the strategic use of their key resources and capabilities.Gong et al. (2021)
Table
Table 2. Top 10 journals in terms of number of articles published in the field of digital transformation.
Table 2. Top 10 journals in terms of number of articles published in the field of digital transformation.
Source PublicationImpact FactorRecords% of 406
IEEE Access3.745153.69
Mis Quarterly Executive4.088153.69
Technological Forecasting and Social Change5.846153.69
Production Planning & Control3.605112.7
Business Horizons3.444102.46
Business Process Management Journal2.121102.46
California Management Review3.909102.46
Government Information Quarterly5.09892.21
Industrial Marketing Management4.69592.21
International Journal of Information Management8.2181.97
Table
Table 3. Literature on key nodes in the field of digital transformation.
Table 3. Literature on key nodes in the field of digital transformation.
TitleAuthor (Year)Total Citations
The Digital Transformation of Healthcare: Current Status and the Road AheadAgarwal et al. (2010)316
Digital Transformation StrategiesMatt et al. (2015)276
Innovation Diffusion in Global Contexts: Determinants of Post-Adoption Digital Transformation of European CompaniesZhu et al. (2006)257
Industry 4.0 Technologies: Implementation Patterns in Manufacturing CompaniesFrank et al. (2019)248
Options for Formulating a Digital Transformation StrategyHess et al. (2016)160
Open Innovation: Research, Practices, and PoliciesBogers et al. (2018)130
The Sharing Economy: Your Business Model’s Friend or Foe?Kathan et al. (2016)117
The Role of Dynamic Capabilities in Responding to Digital Disruption: A Factor-Based Study of the Newspaper IndustryKarimi et al. (2015)106
Digital Innovation and Transformation: an Institutional PerspectiveHinings et al. (2018)105
Building Dynamic Capabilities for Digital Transformation: an Ongoing Process of Strategic RenewalWarner et al. (2019)100
Table
Table 4. Key scholars in the field of digital transformation.
Table 4. Key scholars in the field of digital transformation.
AuthorResearch InstitutionsCountryRecords
Hess, T.University of MunichGermany7
Roth, S.La Rochelle Business School;
University of Turku		France;
Finland		3
Benlian, A.Technical University of DarmstadtGermany3
Holmstrom, J.Aalto UniversityFinland3
Szalavetz, A.Hungarian Academy of SciencesHungary3
Wiesbock, F.University of MunichGermany3
Alange, S.Chalmers University of TechnologySweden2
Andriole, S.J.Villanova UniversityUSA2
Ayala, N.F.Federal University of Rio Grande do SulPortugal2
Baptistia, J.Lancaster UniversityUK2
Table
Table 5. Matching between keywords in clusters and the three thematic areas.
Table 5. Matching between keywords in clusters and the three thematic areas.
KeywordClusterThematic Area
ICT, blockchain productivitydigital economysymbiosis of organization
context, exploration, smart city, e-government, SME, firmpublic service
boundary resource, digital platform, alignmentbusiness ecosystem
pandemic, sustainability, COVID-19related challenge
Optimization, cloud computingIoT system
absorptive capacitybusiness ecosystemreconstruction of capabilities
IoT, data analytics, cloud, artificial intelligence, complexitybig data
digital strategy, implementation, capabilities, decision makingplatform logic
industry 4.0, big data, digital servitization, maturity modelsmart manufacturing
competition, information system, platform, knowledge, service, value co-creationvalue propositionvalue creation
value creation, product development, competitive advantagebusiness ecosystem
organization, adoptionplatform logic
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Xu, X.; Hou, G.; Wang, J. Research on Digital Transformation Based on Complex Systems: Visualization of Knowledge Maps and Construction of a Theoretical Framework. Sustainability 2022, 14, 2683. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14052683

AMA Style

Xu X, Hou G, Wang J. Research on Digital Transformation Based on Complex Systems: Visualization of Knowledge Maps and Construction of a Theoretical Framework. Sustainability. 2022; 14(5):2683. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14052683

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Xu, Xiurui, Guangming Hou, and Junpeng Wang. 2022. "Research on Digital Transformation Based on Complex Systems: Visualization of Knowledge Maps and Construction of a Theoretical Framework" Sustainability 14, no. 5: 2683. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14052683

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