Organizational competencies toward digital transformation at the events of disruptive changes: an operational process innovation perspective

Purpose Digital transformation becomes the future path for all organizations. Organizations are in need to progress the technology in the event of rapid environmental changes in all aspects. This implies the essential need to adapt to these changes, not only to benefit from the vast opportunities it offers yet even to stay relevant in this instability, complexity, uncertainty and vagueness environment. This paper aims to examine the impact of different variables such as disruptive change, technological process innovation and industry 4.0 (I4.0) on digital transformation. It helps identify the different capabilities needed for digitalization and digital maturity, identify the supporting methods for adopting different technologies and offer answers to overwhelmed those challenges and obstacles resulting in this environment. Design/methodology/approach A quantitative approach was used in conducting this research, whereas a questionnaire survey strategy was used for this investigation. In total, 450 participants have been surveyed from three major private mining organizations in the Jordanian context. Structural equation modeling was used for the analysis stage and hypotheses testing. Findings The results of the analysis revealed that support the direct impact of the event of disruptive change, technological process innovation on digital transformation. In addition, the results showed that there is a positive direct impact of the event of disruptive change on technological process innovation. While I4.0 was found to moderate the relationship between the event of disruptive change and digital transformation. Practical implications Decision-makers are responsible for directing their organization toward digitalization. This transformation needs capabilities that help organizations in competing and survive in this challenging environment. That is, it is essential to increase process innovation and moving toward more adoption of I4.0. However, the event of disruptive change should be considered as a motivation for the organizations rather than an obstacle. Moreover, different populations, methods and other variables that may affect digitalization may generate novel insights in further research. Originality/value Theoretically, novel insights into the event of the disruptive change and its implications have been added to the literature. The models used in the current examination provide new directions for understanding and studying digital transformation and organizational capabilities that are needed for transformation. From the managerial perspective, these findings enhance understanding of practices in which the event of disruptive change supports innovation and highlight the values added through recommending more adopting of I4.0 applications to yield more innovative harvests.

Teaching and Learning with Technology During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Highlighting the Need for Micro-Meso-Macro Alignments

All over the world teaching and learning transitioned to forms of online education due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this contribution, we recognize challenges that this disruptive change brought about for teachers and learners. We reflect on these challenges, based on discussions at EDUsummIT2019 in Quebec about the theme “Learners and learning contexts: New alignments for the digital age”. Informed by theoretical conceptualization and empirical evidence we identify micro-meso-macro alignments that need to be in place to move education into the digital age: alignments for quality learning contexts, alignments in support for teachers, and alignments through partnerships.

Disruptive Changing Higher Education Ecosystems: Have University Academics Been Gazumped?

Continual reforms in the Australian Higher Education Sector result in ongoing significant changes to the experiences of the Australian academic. As a result, massification, internationalisation and corporatization form the landscape of academia in Australia. The Australian University Accounting Academic (AUAA) faces ongoing challenges and opportunities within this dynamic academic environment, and this study explores these challenges in relation to teaching themed issues that confront the AUAA. By using a questionnaire and interviews with AUAAs, three themes emerged, being curriculum, teaching workload, and the impact of online teaching. The “ASSET” support framework is developed from these conversations with the AUAA’s to help them become an “asset” to the university during these times of disruptive change instead of allowing the system to “gazump” them.

Resistance to (Digital) Change

Resistance to change has been elaborated on from different perspectives: with a focus on employee resistance to change and as a systemic phenomenon, but also in the light of digital change and digital transformation. However, an integration of these approaches is not easy to find. This chapter discusses the phenomenon of resistance to change in light of current understandings of the concept as well as new elaborations, which might help to pinpoint specific challenges of digital change resistance. To this end, I will dive into the research traditions that have been built up around the concept. In order to understand resistance to digital change, specifically, I will draw upon the theory of Danish educational researcher Knut Illeris and explore the potential of his writings to explain resistance to digital change from a learning perspective. Throughout I will use examples from higher education digitalization research, to illustrate the respective phenomena. Key navigation points of this chapter are to elaborate resistance to (digital) change both as an individual and a systemic phenomenon and to contribute to a better understanding of resistance to digital change in light of incremental and disruptive change expectations.