Organizing for digitization: a balancing act

Abstract

Digitization brings profound changes, which require new approaches to organizing. Construction, an institutionalised and heavily regulated industry that demands innovative solutions, is an ideal setting for studying the tensions implicit in digitization. A longitudinal embedded case of a design firm is used to demonstrate the changing approaches used to organizing for digitization as it shapes and is shaped by the wider institutional field. The case study reveals three stages of organizing for digitization as follows experimentation, leadership and active investment. A cycle of mutual constitution among users, organizational change and institutional events, such as benchmarking, standards and mandates, prepare construction firms, and the industry in general, for digitization. To align innovation with regulation, firms are called to respond to and balance exogenous change with endogenous user-led change.