Digitalization and Digital Transformation

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Methodology

In this chapter, we will elaborate on our methodology and why it fits the aim of our research. Furthermore, we will outline the related epistemology and ontology. We will explain our research philosophy, as well as the chosen research design, research approach, methods and strategy. We will furthermore describe our sampling strategy, data collection and analysis. We will conclude this chapter with the research quality and ethical considerations.
Based on our research question, we defined a methodology as the foundation for our study. We decided on a research philosophy, which supports the choice of strategy, method as well as data collection. These elements have to be aligned to ensure the study follows a coherent structure. Figure 3.1, provides an overview of our choice of methods and techniques, as well as the related methodology, epistemology, and ontology. All these parts are furthermore laid out in detail in the following chapters to allow an understanding of the assumptions that shape our study.

Research Philosophy

As outlined before, our research aims to find out how digitalization as a trend influences innovation in management, more specifically, in the area of project teams. Consequently, we as researchers perceive that the team members and the managers we interview are part of and influence the reality and should, therefore, be the center of our study. Additionally, the spoken word, actions, and interactions of the subjects provide us with deep insights into the processes of the organization and the effects of digital progress.
The assumptions of our world and the nature of knowledge as well as reality are shaped and identified by the philosophy our research is based on. (Saunders et al., 2012; Bell & Bryman, 2012) Therefore, the matters of ontology, as well as epistemology, make up the foundation of the research project, as they describe how we assume and inquire into the nature of reality (Easterby-Smith et al., 2015). Furthermore, according to Saunders et al. (2012), the way the researcher constructs and understands the world is influenced by these theoretical viewpoints. To serve the purpose of our study, we take a relativist ontology. Thereby, we take the stance that “[p]eople hold different views, and their ability to gain acceptance from others may depend on their status and past reputation.” (Easterby-Smith et al., 2015, p. 48).
Furthermore, relativism denies the existence of a universal truth (Smith, 2008). Relativism, therefore, fits the purpose of the study, as the analysis of the interviews happened from the point of view where not the individual, but the processes and interactions concerning them were studied. The study of management innovation in project teams is a holistic approach and touches upon all hierarchical level inside an organization. These include team members in different geographical locations. Hence, the interrelation of these actors is the object under investigation.
Similarly, Cooper (2011) describes that “[t]he interaction of relativism stresses the action between singular things and categories rather than the things and categories themselves” (p.185). Furthermore, a relativist approach is chosen to find how team members perceive the changes in management and whether they are based on changes in the digital landscape. Additionally, we as researchers take a relativist point of view when assessing changes in management and comparing them with the body of literature.
Epistemology is concerned with the consideration of what knowledge is acceptable in a discipline (Bryman & Bell, 2012) or the study of how the nature of knowledge is studied as well as which ways can be used to inquire into the social and physical world (Easterby-Smith et al., 2015). As a consequence of defining our research topic and in line with a relativist ontology, we decide to build our research on social constructionist epistemology. The basis of social constructionism is the “[…] view that reality is not objective and exterior but is socially constructed and is given meaning by people in their daily interactions with others.” (Easterby-Smith et al., 2015, p.52).
Therefore, our research does not focus on gathering facts and frequencies, but on the meaning, individuals make of their experiences. We aim to understand the emotions and thoughts of team members in the organization as well as the way communication happens. This is why communication in partially distributed teams is one of the core topics we emphasize in our research. Sharing experiences with others, especially by using the medium of language, develops the idea of sense-making in social constructionism. This communication can happen verbally or non-verbally and depends on the matter of communication channel that is used, which is changing due to digitalization. Thus, we do not try to find external laws or external stimuli to explain behavior, but on the situational sensemaking of individuals. (Bryman and Bell, 2012) Another aspect laid out by Bryman and Bell (2012), describing that social constructionism can also lead to findings when examined outside of the social context that is studied. This serves as a basis for an abductive research approach, which we chose for this research and explain later in this part.
Concluding, a relativist ontology and a social constructionist epistemology allow us to make sense of the holistic situation in the case we are analyzing and match our chosen research approach. Hence, we examine and thereby understand aspects like digital drivers for the management to innovate and how employees individually perceive these changes. Moreover, we can see the interrelation between the different subjects as well as the changes in processes by focusing on communication and collaboration in the organization.

Research Design

In line with the aim of our study, as well as the research philosophy, we decided to conduct a qualitative exploratory study.
Qualitative research is based on words and descriptions, whereas quantitative data is numerically-driven. For our inquiry, the thick description of qualitative data is the better foundation for analysis, as it allows a more in-depth view of the organizational processes and can be conceptualized further. “[…] qualitative researchers study things in their natural settings, attempting to make sense of or interpret phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them.” (Denzin & Lincoln, 2012, p. 7). For this reason, we decided to conduct qualitative research to get a context-sensitive, rich understanding of the effect of digitalization and the influence on the process of management innovation.
Furthermore, our qualitative research design is in line with the described research philosophy. As social constructionism is based on the view that reality and meaning is based on the interpretation of events by individuals, qualitative data helps to analyze these meaningfully. (Saunders et al., 2012). According to Brekhus, Galliher, and Gubrium (2005), quantitative data is usually associated with thin description or abstraction, whereas qualitative data shows a thorough, or thick, description.
We aim to find out how the digital tools implemented in a company are shaping the work in project teams and what management has to do in order to keep up and react to the changes that happen. This is why we conduct qualitative research, as we want to find out project team members opinions and experiences from their work. Thus, we decided that the thick description is indeed what we are aiming at finding out. We want to go into the context of project teams that work together virtually and are influenced by digital tools. It is a delimitation of our approach not to be able to show if a significant correlation between the factors is present. However, for our research, we do not perceive it as essential to get a significant correlation as a result
Furthermore, in our research design, we had to lay the foundation for the research we are conducting. Saunders et al. (2012) distinguish between the dimensions of descriptive, explanatory, and exploratory studies. While descriptive research tries to develop a profile of specific events, situations, or people, our approach develops over time, and our research needs a higher degree of flexibility than a descriptive approach can offer. Explanatory studies aim to gain an understanding of causal relationships between variables, which is not what we are trying to achieve when studying management innovation. Our research questions ask “how” and “what”, trying to gain insight and discover topics of interest and developing propositions to inquire upon. These are the foundations for an exploratory study (Yin, 2018) “Exploratory research has the advantage that it is flexible and adaptable to change.” (Saunders et al., 2012, p.175). This is in line with our approach to be open for further developments during the conduction of the research.
By using an exploratory study, we can go in the project teams and find out how work is done and might discover more than the topic we initially set out to study. This is especially important to us as we want to look at the collaboration and communication that is taking place in the project teams working virtually. Communication, as well as collaboration, are dynamic topics, which makes an exploratory research design the perfect choice as it is adaptable enough to consider changes. Moreover, because we cannot be certain how this is handled in the different teams, we have to be flexible with our approach — similarly, management innovation, which deals with changes and adaptation of management. Also, when examining how the technology that has been introduced shortly before is used in the teams, openness is necessary, as approaches that are too static fail to consider new developments. Thus, we decided to conduct explanatory research.

Research Approach

After evaluating the different research approaches and testing their applicability to our study, we decided to employ an abductive research approach.
Before conducting our study, we had to make sure how we wanted to infer the results from the data we gather. It is, therefore, necessary to choose a research approach that matches with the chosen methodology. According to Peirce (1934), in research processes, three types of reasoning can be used. They differ in the logic of the inferences. Deductive, inductive, and abductive research approaches are distinguished by their relationship between rule, case, and result. An illustration of this is displayed in Figure 3.3.
As shown in figure 3.3, deductive reasoning starts with a particular rule or general premise that must be true and is then followed by the observation or case. The result of rule and case, if they are logically coherent, are true by definition. Therefore, deductive research tries to work out propositions from current knowledge and test them in the empirical world. However, a deductive approach would not make sense in the context of our study as there are not many absolutely true rules about management innovation in combination with digitalization to base research on. Thus, we do not choose it as an inference form and have to look at the alternatives.
Inductive research, on the other hand, systematically generates theory from data. The research starts with a result, and it will be tested if the case supports, partially or entirely contradicts the predicted outcome. Thereby, a rule is formulated that can change with further cases tested. Nonetheless, deriving hypotheses from data would not generate much insight in the under-researched topic. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study on this topic, and the availability of data is therefore scarce. Moreover, although one might argue that data can be collected, the sample and extent of the research and the limitations of time could not cover the broad subject of matter. Hence, we decide not to follow an inductive approach.
The third research approach, abductive reasoning, makes sense when the aim of the researcher is the discovery of new. Moreover, abductive reasoning is an iterative process as different rules are studied, and if the outcome does not fit the expected results, the process goes on. Hence, according to Peirce (1934), deductive and inductive approaches differ from abductive reasoning as the latter is not based on existing hypotheses or induces them from data. Furthermore, Dubois and Gadde (2002) highlight that an abductive approach focuses on the generation and development of theory. For us, choosing an abductive approach makes sense as it is a step into an area of research that has rarely been examined.
As management innovation is a topic with comparatively low representation in the body of literature and the connection with developments in digitalization is yet to be made, developing the existing theories further is the next logical step to do. Therefore, at the cost of certainty, we aim at gaining reference and developing new explanations in the topic of research. As we study project teams handling digital progress as well as management innovation, thoughts have to go further than what is known already, which goes along with Peirce (1934, p.171) statement that in comparison to deduction and induction: “Abduction is […] the only logical operation which introduces any new ideas.” and thereby has the potential to study innovation.

Research Method

After defining the research approach and deciding to infer data in an abductive way, it is necessary to decide on a research method, which suits the aim of our study best. Easterby-Smith et al., (2015) state that the chosen research methods are instruments to collect data, for analyzing and finally concluding it. As we want to gain deep insight into project teams, we decided to closely examine teams that are working together in one company. Thereby, we have the setting that the management decisions affect all employees, and the same tools are used, but different teams might perceive the effects of them in several ways. To achieve that, we chose a single case study method to base our research on.
Simons (2009) defines a case study as an “in-depth exploration from multiple perspectives of the complexity and uniqueness of a particular project […]” (p.21). Similarly, Schramm (1971) describes the essence of a case study to “illuminate a decision or set of decisions: why they were taken, how they were implemented, and with what result.” (p. 6). This is in accordance with our research philosophy but also the aim of the research to go with an explorative approach. Nonetheless, it has to be laid out what exactly is studied when conducting research in a case study. A case, according to Gerring (2006), is a phenomenon that is delimited in space and time. When deciding for one company, a delimitation in space is present, as it is limited to the organization that we are focusing on. The time is delimited in a way that we only gather information over the time frame we are conducting research on.
However, when deciding on a research method, it has to align with the chosen methodology. A single case study works well with the social constructionist epistemology in our research. The constructionist approach for case studies introduced by Stake (1995) deals less with the generalizability and how valid it is but aims at gaining a rich understanding of organizational processes and behavior.
Similarly, Siggelkow (2007) describes how case studies allow highlighting important research questions, how they inspire to create new ideas as well as a more natural understanding of complex concepts. Furthermore, he comments on the fact that some case study researchers claim to have a representative sample: “To me, that is a mismatch of method and goals: to say something representative, you need to pick a different methodology” (p.21). Thereby he backs the approach we are following with our chosen abductive reasoning to not aim at generalizable theory but to explore and develop.
As innovation happens in rapidly changing environments, we decided to conduct our research in the IT sector. We approached a German IT firm, who agreed that the research could be conducted in their organization. The company develops tailor-made IT solutions for its customers, which are mainly medium-sized companies. Besides other services, the company offers ERP systems, e-commerce stores, as well as applications. As their teams are remote as well as co-located and mainly work together virtually, we decided that it offers a great environment to study the digital implications on those teams and their management. However, there is a multitude of different teams, and we do not only want to look at a single one. Therefore, as we study members from different teams, there are multiple nested cases in a single case study. Thus, allowing us to gain insight into different environments in a single company. We, therefore, conduct nine interviews with members from different teams. More information about whom we interviewed and in what role is laid out later in the data collection part.

Research Strategy

Following the decision on conducting a single case study, it is necessary to lay out a strategy in which way the research will be conducted. During the process of finding and redefining our research topic and question, as well as matching it with the suitable literature and theories, we realized that the abductive research process of systematic combining by Dubois and Gadde (2002) fitted our study the best. The approach aims at further developing theory in case studies abductively. This is done by constant comparison and combination of theoretical models and the empirical world. As our research topic evolves from the interaction of different areas of research, the approach of systematic combining allows us to include new areas of theory, once our case indicates their relevance. Additionally, aspects of the literature, which become relevant in the course of our study, can be applied to the case.
The approach of Dubois and Gadde (2002) strives to “discover new things – other variables and other relationships” (p. 559). The process they describe is non-linear, in accordance with the relativist research it is based on. Thereby, the continuous development of a case can be considered. Standardized research processes, as they are common in deductive research, are not applicable in this case. This is due to the fact that research centers around the systematic combining process, in which the framework, the analysis of the case as well as the empirical fieldwork emerge simultaneously. The outcome of the research depends on the path that the researcher decides to take and the boundaries that are set for the analysis. Hence, it is necessary to show the decisions and assumptions the research is based on, which we did by explaining the theoretical foundation as well as the methodology our study uses.

Table of Contents
1. Introduction
1.1 Background
1.2 Problem Discussion
1.3 Research Purpose
1.4 Definitions
2. Literature Review
2.1 Digitalization and Digital Transformation
2.2 Project Teams
2.3 Digital Implications on Project Teams
2.4 Virtual Teams
2.5 Management Innovation in a project context
2.6 Interconnections between fields of research
3. Methodology 
3.1 Research Philosophy
3.2 Research Design
3.3 Research Approach
3.4 Research Method
3.5 Research Strategy
3.6 Sampling Strategy
3.7 Data Collection
3.8 Data Analysis
3.9 Research Quality
3.10 Ethical Considerations
4. Results
4.1 Project Teams
4.2 Technology
4.3 Virtual Teams
4.4 Communication and Collaboration
4.5 Trust
4.6 Leadership / Management
5. Analysis 
5.1 Project Teams
5.2 Technology
5.3 Virtual Teams
5.4 Communication & Collaboration
5.5 Trust
5.6 Leadership / Management
5.7 Management Innovation
5.8 Framework
6. Concluding Discussion 
7. Managerial Implications
8. Limitations 
9. Future Research 
10. Acknowledgments
11. Reference list
12. Appendix
12.1 Topic Guide
12.2 Informed Consent.
12.3 Coding Scheme
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The Effects of Digitalization on Managing Project Teams