Making Sense of Continuous Digital Change : Translation and Implementation Across Organizational Levels

Sammanfattning

Organizations increasingly rely on digital initiatives to improve efficiency, coordination, and competitiveness. However, digital transformation rarely occurs through isolated projects. Instead, organizations often manage multiple overlapping initiatives simultaneously, creating sustained internal pace and ongoing pressure on local actors responsible for implementation. Existing research has largely focused on digital transformation as a planned and sequential process, while less attention has been given to how managers handle continuous and interdependent change in everyday practice. The purpose of this study is to investigate how managers interpret, prioritize, and implement digital initiatives under conditions of sustained internal pace. The study aims to generate a deeper understanding of how digital transformation is enacted in practice within a large organizational setting. This study adopts a constructivist standpoint and an abductive approach. A qualitative single-case study was conducted within a large retail organization. Empirical data was collected through 13 semi-structured interviews with managers and specialists involved in digital implementation processes. The data was analyzed using the Gioia methodology. The findings show that digital transformation in practice is characterized by overlapping initiatives, continuous information pressure, and ongoing adjustment rather than sequential implementation. Managers continuously engage in prioritization, sensemaking, translation, and experimentation to make digital initiatives workable in local practice. The study further shows that many implementation challenges originate from structural conditions related to simultaneity, interdependence, and coordination across organizational levels, rather than from local resistance alone.