Project Details
Projekt
Digital Transformation in Healthcare: From Digital Tools to Digital Actors (DigiAct)
Applicants
Professor Dr. Christoph Rosenkranz; Dr. Tamina Seeger-Nukpezah; Professor Dr. Ali Sunyaev
Subject Area
Data Management, Data-Intensive Systems, Computer Science Methods in Business Informatics
Term
since 2020
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 442171588
We live in a world of increasingly digitized workforces. Technological developments in software, hardware, and artificial intelligence (AI) have enabled the infusion of digital technologies into a wide range of objects that are present in everyday life and at work. These emerging AI-enabled digital artifacts fundamentally reshape how organizations organize and carry out their work, as they are no longer simple tools used by humans to do tasks, but perform organizational work as autonomous, and somewhat intelligent, actors in their own right. As such they become digital actors. Digital actors are central to digital transformation. They can, once made available and permeating their context, serve and act in a self-perpetuating manner. Regardless of whether actions are carried out by human or non-human (i.e., digital) actors, patterns of action are the building blocks of organizations, constituting various organizational capabilities. In organization studies, the concept of organizational routines has been used for almost two decades to describe repetitive, recognizable patterns of interdependent actions, carried out by multiple actors. However, we know next to nothing about the enfolding interactions between human and non-human (digital) actors in organization routines. Digital actors within a routine performance rewrite the “rules of engagement” for work professionals and may lead to self-perpetuation and fundamental changes in their processes and routines. One important domain that has received attention by both organizational routines scholars and researchers of digital transformation and digital actors is healthcare. Digital actors, as one of the more extreme examples of the disruptive character of digital transformation, are now beginning to impact all facets of the current care model. As recommendations, guidelines, and actual implementation and use change, the impact of these novel, digital actors on medical and healthcare work practices and organizational routines in healthcare is considerable. However, empirical and theoretical accounts of these digital challenges largely are missing. With this research project we aim to address these gaps in literature by employing a mixed-methods research approach that builds on a combination of routines mining and a qualitative case study approach in a large clinic that currently undergoes significant digital transformation. Specifically, we aim to: (1) develop a method for computationally-intensive theory building for routines based on digital trace data; (2) apply this method to empirically study the evolution of digital actors in an empirical healthcare setting and build theory based on this analysis; (3) integrate and challenge or support this theory by applying qualitative methods in an embedded single-case study to corroborate the initial theory or extend if necessary.
DFG Programme
Priority Programmes
