The Embedding of Chief Digital Officers in Organizations’ Top Management Teams

Digital transformation poses significant challenges for companies across all industries, including volatile customer demands, shifts in competitive dynamics, and upheavals of established business models. In response, the Chief Digital Officer role has emerged as a strategic approach for centrally driving digital transformation efforts. While research recognizes the pivotal role of Chief Digital Officers in facilitating digital transformation, the complexity of digital initiatives precludes the expectation that one individual senior executive can manage them single-handedly. This calls for a thorough investigation of Chief Digital Officers’ embedding in organizations’ top management teams. Despite the diversity of related issues, they have thus far received sporadic attention, thereby limiting our understanding of how Chief Digital Officers are integrated in the upper echelons to manage digtal transformation. This cumulative dissertation delves into the embedding of Chief Digital Officers in organizations’ top management teams by examining the topic from various perspectives. Specifically, it leverages the digital transformation governance framework, incorporating structural, procedural, and relational viewpoints across the projects. Through this comprehensive approach, the studies enrich our theoretical insights into the multifaceted integration of Chief Digital Officers within organizations. Additionally, this dissertation provides practical implications for companies appointing Chief Digital Officers to spearhead digital transformation, addressing the challenges they face in executing their digital agendas. In particular, it is acknowledged that Chief Digital Officers are not a one-size-fits-all solution for digital transformation. Instead, they must be adeptly integrated into the organization to fully unleash the role’s potential.