The Purpose's Purpose in Digital Transformation

Most digital transformation initiatives fail in achieving their long-term goals. In particular, people’s resistance to change is a major risk, surpassing even technological concerns. One people-focused concept in companies is purpose which reflects the reason for an organization’s and individual’s existence. Despite recognizing the crucial role of people in transformations, the influence of purpose on digital transformation is poorly understood. To better comprehend and leverage this relationship, our study explores how purpose influences digital transformations through a comparative case study, analyzing two companies applying a multilevel perspective. We found that an organization-centric purpose supports communication and provides direction within digital transformation on an organizational level. An individual-centric purpose encourages reflection and therefore enables digital transformation by fostering alignment on an individual level. This study contributes to the theoretical understanding of the connection of digital transformation and purpose and inspires practitioners to effectively manage digital transformation tensions using purpose.