Antecedents for Digital Transformation: Lessons from the Public Sector

Digital transformation, which refers to an organisation-wide change and adoption of emerging technologies, has become a mega trend capturing the attention of practitioners and researchers across disciplines. From practitioners’ point of view, digital transformation has improved organisational performance, primarily due to increased efficiency and effectiveness. Even though private and commercial organisations seem to have embarked on the digital transformation journey early, evidence suggests that public organisations are catching up steadily. However, digital transformation research is still dominated by those investigating the phenomenon within the private sector. Given the contextual differences between the sectors and the dearth of literature covering the public organisations settings, this study explores the antecedents of digital transformation in the public sector. Based on the synthesis of a systematic literature review of 13 articles and 17 interviews from four public organisations, we proposed a theoretical model conceptualising a relationship between seven constructs (i.e., digital transformation, IT alignment, organisational agility, information security, organisational structure, organisational culture, and stakeholder relationships). PLS-SEM analysis was performed to test the theoretical model with data collected from 364 respondents using an online questionnaire. The contribution to research and practice is presented.