It’s Not Me, It’s You

Sammanfattning

The purpose of this thesis is to explore how digital transformation (DT) and its rapid development have affected corporations’ experience of horizontal organizational resistance to digital change. The study builds on qualitative semi-structured interviews and applies an abductive approach and a social constructionist perspective. The findings suggest horizontal resistance is prominently affecting DT adoption. To effectively navigate and diagnose the phenomenon, we present a framework categorizing the manifestations of horizontal resistance assumed in DT through two dimensions—the ownership overlap dimension and the barrier dimension. With the two dimensions, a heatmap of where horizontal resistance occurs is presented with four combinations of manifestations of horizontal resistance: identity conflicts, ownership intrusion, disconnected departmental goals, and translation failures.