Background: IT has been reshaping competition and strategy for decades. However, the current wave of IT-driven competition is distinct from previous ones. As new digital technologies have a disruptive effect, organizations must adapt to remain competitive. Digital transformation particularly affects the automotive industry as digitalization has become the most important phenomenon since the creation of the industry. Managers in automotive companies need to thus become active in implementing strategic changes and utilize digital opportunities. For this, managers must apply their dynamic managerial capabilities to sense and seize digital opportunities and to transform the company. Research Problem: Despite the wide literature on dynamic capabilities, dynamic managerial capabilities, and digital transformation, research on these three concepts’ interlinkages is underdeveloped. There is furthermore little evidence on how the interaction of the underpinnings of dynamic managerial capabilities at an organizational level affect strategic change and performance in a changing environment. Research Purpose: The purpose of this study is to deepen the understanding of an automotive company’s development of dynamic managerial capabilities to facilitate its digital transformation. It aims at showcasing how managerial cognition, social capital, and human capital are relevant to sense, seize, and transform for digital transformation. A framework is developed to visualize the respective interlinkages. Research Question: How can dynamic managerial capabilities facilitate an automotive company’s digital transformation? Research Method: This study uses a qualitative approach. An in-depth case study aiming for theory-elaboration was conducted at Volvo Group. Data was purposefully collected through interviews, observations, and internal documents, and then analyzed through a thematic analysis. Conclusion: This paper’s main contribution lies in the application of dynamic managerial capabilities in the context of digital transformation. Our findings suggest that all dynamic managerial capabilities are important for sensing, seizing, and transforming for digital transformation. We find managerial cognition to be vital throughout all the dynamic capabilities steps, whereas managerial social capital has strong influence on the sensing stage. Managerial human capital in terms of industry experience plays a major role for the seizing and transforming stages of digital transformation. Our results indicate that it is important to build teams with complementing dynamic managerial capabilities to facilitate organizational digital transformation.

Background: From digitalization acceleration, digital disruptions such as edge-cutting technologies, have caused challenges and changes to business’ natures in terms of value, structures, and strategies. No industry nor organization is immune to these impacts, especially multinational enterprises in the information technology industry, whereas these businesses have started to overlook and disregard traditional ways of working to enhance these impacts. Agility has become a new vital dynamic capability in today’s environment, whereas organizational agility is argued to support businesses to cope with this turbulent era of increased competition, globalization, and digitalization. Although, to enhance this, traditional business processes and operations must be rethought and extended to a digital context.  Purpose: As digital disruptions have become a threat to businesses' values and operations, it has gained increased attention in both practice and research. Organizational agility is raised as a tool and response to cope with these new digital threats and changes to fundamental business values, however, this has also increased pressure on managers to create and maintain cohesion and motivation when change is imposed. Nonetheless, how this is managed and experienced within local subsidiaries of multinational enterprises lacks both exploration and understanding, and thus, suggesting that there is much left to uncover. This, especially on how to maintain local responsiveness while enhancing global fundamental values when introducing organization agility to cope with changes and digital disruptions.   Method: With a relativism ontology, interpretivism epistemology, and inductive research approach, this research studied how to be organizationally agile under digital disruptions, from a subsidiary perspective in an IT multinational enterprise. Through a qualitative explorative research and multiple-case study design, the empirical data was gathered from 12 semi-structured in-depth interviewees and observations, where the employee perspective set the foundation of how organizational agility and digital disruptions are managed and experienced within their local subsidiaries. The data were analyzed through a thematic analysis, including separate within-case analyzes, a cross-case analysis, and lastly, a comparison with existing literature.  Conclusion: The findings show how multinational enterprises in the information technology industry could manage organizational agility when digital disruptions occur and how this is experienced amongst employees. Subsidiary Management is vital for coping with digital disruptions whereas Strategic Decision-Making for responding to the same, fundamentally relying on the Organizational Culture with the six key factors of Ownership, Learning, Diversity, Inclusion, Trust, and Mindset. Moreover, organizational agility could cause a negative tradeoff of work-life balance and a negative tradeoff between increased workload and individual growth, whereas increased autonomy creates a tradeoff between local independence and global cohesiveness. This, however, was experienced as both positive and negative. Being organizationally agile is vital on both global and local levels to utilize efficiency, flexibility, and be locally responsive to regional market demands where the attention must be given to people rather than structures to be agile and digitally responsive.

Among ongoing concerns for firms is the need to remain relevant and competitive. To address these concerns, firms often turn to technology to meet rapidly changing consumer demands, to provide differentiated offerings and to increase firm efficiency and productivity. Thus, the decision-making process that leads to the adoption of new technology is of great importance to marketers. Grounded in the resource-based view of the firm, this dissertation examines absorptive capacity and technological opportunism as firm dynamic capabilities and their role in delivering successful, firm-level technology adoption decisions. This research also examines the moderating role of internal micro-politics on the technology adoption process. With a qualitative and quantitative approach, this dissertation develops and tests an empirical model of the firm-level adoption decision process and its outcomes. Theoretical and empirical evidence provided by this research offers insights into the firm-level technology adoption process that should be of value to both researchers and practitioners. Analyses show that firm absorptive capacity and technological opportunism are instrumental in shaping the firm’s perceptions of a transformational technology, which in turn positively influences overall satisfaction with the adopted technology. In contrast to theoretical support, results also show that the positive relationship between a firm’s dynamic capabilities and its perceptions of a technology’s characteristics is negatively influenced by the presence of micro-political strategies used to garner internal buy-in and support for the technology adoption decision. These findings indicate marketers of technology should utilize this knowledge to guide client firms through the technology adoption process based on evaluations of the client firm’s level of dynamic capabilities and micro-political environment. Further, managers seeking to enhance product or service offerings through technology adoption should seek to develop their dynamic capabilities that inform adoption decisions. Additionally, managers should carefully manage stakeholder relationships to minimize any negative influence micro-political strategies may have on the decision-making process. Study limitations and areas of future research are also discussed.

Many organizations are looking to implement data-driven technologies such as big data analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning in their operations due to their rapid development and increased usefulness in recent years. With technology changing fast, it is difficult for managers to determine which sources of data are relevant in the context of these technologies. This paper aims to explore opportunities to implement data-driven technologies in the Stockholm metro. The technologies are assessed based on their usefulness and feasibility. The assessment is also done in regards to the current state of the organization in charge of the Stockholm metro, Trafikförvaltningen, and its internal capabilities. The study has been conducted through interviews aimed at understanding Trafikförvaltningen as an organization, as well as literary reviews of state-of-the-art technologies aimed at understanding what is technically possible. By aligning the state of the organization with current technologies, it was concluded that big data for preventive maintenance and smart grids for minimizing energy consumption were the most relevant data-driven technologies to implement. / Många organisationer vill implementera datadrivna teknologier som stordataanalys, artificiell intelligens och maskininlärning i sina verksamheter på grund av de senaste årens dess snabba utvecklingstakt och ökade användbarhet. I och med den snabba teknologiska utvecklingstakten är det svårt för beslutsfattare att avgöra vilka datakällor som är relevanta för dessa teknologier. Den här uppsatsen syftar till att undersöka möjligheterna att implementera datadrivna teknologier i Stockholms tunnelbanesystem. Dessa teknologier är bedömda efter användbarhet och möjlighet för lyckad implementation. Bedömningen tar även hänsyn till det nuvarande tillståndet av organisationen som är ansvarig för Stockholm tunnelbana, Trafikförvaltningen, och dess interna färdigheter. Studien har genomförts via intervjuer som syftat till att förstå Trafikförvaltningen som organisation, tillsammans med en litteraturstudie av den senaste tekniken som syftat till att förstå vad som är tekniskt möjligt. Genom en analys av organisationens nuvarande tillstånd och nuvarande teknologier drogs slutsatsen att stordataanalys för preventivt underhåll och smarta elnät för minskad energikonsumtion är de mest relevanta datadrivna teknologierna att implementera.

During the pilot search, we discovered a gap in the literature in regard to the combination of Dynamic Capabilities and Emerging Technologies and the combined effect that both have on creating Supply Chain Resilience. Numerous studies discussed the subject’s individual, or two of the combined, but not all three together. This was the base for the purpose of the study of how emerging technologies will affect the dynamic capabilities of sensing, and from those effects, create supply chain resilience. A systematic content analysis was utilized using the existing literature of the three subjects. Based on the first scan of the literature, a conceptual framework was created, which was the foundation moving forward.  The findings indicate that the implementation of Emerging Technologies into the sensing process will permit an enhanced set of tools for gathering and sharing data and information both internally and externally, while offering increased visibility, traceability and transparency throughout the supply chain, improving sensing capabilities. Due to potentially higher degree of accountability and openness, this could result in a more collaborative nature built on trust and interlinked cooperation. With higher degrees of trust and interconnection between supply chain partners, a decentralized, collective problem-solving system/approach could be applied, where the interests of all involved parties are considered.

Background and problem: Due to disruptions in the business environment, the importance of organizational resilience has become increasingly important. The availability of resources and the strategic management of these resources are important for maintaining organizational resilience. This study contributes to the literature by addressing the strategic management of organizational resilience in SMEs and how they maintain resilience, since the SMEs’perspective has not been adequately researched in prior literature. The study is also of practical importance given SMEs’ prominent contribution to the economy. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate how SMEs employ strategies to maintain organizational resilience, including how they deploy their resources and capabilities to maintain organizational resilience. To do this, disruptive events faced by SMEs are also explored. Method: The study adopts a qualitative multiple case study method. Primary data has been collected through interviews, with the chief executive officer of seven SMEs operating in Sweden. Conclusion: The empirical findings reveal strategies that SMEs adopt for maintaining organizational resilience. Categorizing these strategies into resource-based strategies and capability-based strategies reveals how SMEs, which are often limited in resources, focus on developing dynamic capabilities to maintain organizational resilience. The finding also shows that the strategies employed can be proactive and emergent, where these either work separately or combined in a process where proactive strategies can support the emergent strategies.

Background: With the emerging and disruption of new technologies, digital transformationhas heavily impacted on businesses of all kinds, especially SMEs. Consequently, organizations must innovate their business model to adapt the changeable environment in many ways such as providing new products & services, developing new markets, more collaborations with partnership, and investing digital tools to deliver more value to the customers. It is therefore necessary for organizations and academicians to understand the dynamic capabilities framework for the business model innovation. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to find out the role of dynamic capabilities in the digital transformation of business model innovation (BMI) in SMEs. During this process, we also explore digital transformation and make future explanations of the key elements of BMI in our case companies. Method: In order to understand how SMEs build up capabilities for digital transformation inthe business model innovation, we carry out this study by using semi-structured interviews with open answered questions. The interviews consisted of 6 participants in various senior management positions at 5 case companies. The participants are either the company owners or the department managers. Findings: From the interviews, we studied that all the case companies had been in process of digital transformation for a certain extent. In terms of their business model, the digitaltransformation reflects in 3 domains: new digital products & services, new markets & segments,and key partnerships. In addition, companies build dynamic capabilities for their digital business model via a total of 8 activities, including digital scouting, digital learning & planning, digital mind-set, agile working, investment in digital assets, collaboration with partners, creating digital culture, and redesigning organizational structure. Relevant management skills are the enablers throughout the whole innovation process. Finally, our study studies theenabling role of management in building dynamic capabilities and reacting to change.

Background: Challenging times have affected all economic sectors and every business environment. Hence the importance of developing resilience, particularly in startups that are young organizations characterized by dynamism and often lack resources. Knowledge is described in this paper as a crucial resource that, when accurately managed, can be determinant in the startup survival and constitute a critical differentiator and advantage. However, managing and exploiting internal knowledge might not be enough, thus the importance of institutionalizing organizational learning in exploring and further internalizing external knowledge sources. Fostering and strengthening organizational knowledge capability can positively influence the development of resilience in the organization. Research Problem: Previous research has focused on resilience from the individual perspective and has recently centered on the disruption caused by the Covid19 Pandemic. Further research should address resilience from the organizational perspective acknowledging the operational challenges faced in the particular business context of a startup. Moreover, previous research has established organizational learning as both an input and an output of organizational resilience, exhibiting the link between better resilience capacity and higher learning skills. However, further research is needed to correlate the organizational competencies that enable the company to anticipate future issues and their impact on the amount of resilience deployed. Research Purpose: This study aims at exploring how, through knowledge management practices and routines, knowledge as an essential resource can be internalized and utilized in developing a more resilient organization capable of foreseeing and reacting to future challenges. Research Question: How can knowledge management practices and routines be implemented to actively foster resilience? Research Method: Qualitative, retroductive research; Ontology and epistemology – Critical realism; Methodology – Single case study; Data collection - 9 semi-structured in-depth interviews; Sampling –Purposive and snowball sampling; Data analysis - empirical, retroduction, and corroboration. Conclusion: Deriving from our findings a model was developed addressing how organizational knowledge can be fostered through routines and practices to manage internal and external knowledge in developing knowledge capability and institutionalizing organizational learning. Furthermore, consideration was placed on the ability to foresee and react in a timely manner to current and future challenges that might be faced.

As today’s world is becoming more digital, so is almost all business markets are becoming more and more digital and companies that choose to digitalize seem to not only increase efficiency and profitability. It also makes the company better at adapting to change. Despite these upsides, not all companies are digitalizing proven in some part by the panic among companies created by the Covid-19 pandemic. This study aims to look at if the categorist of management in companies can influence the company's ability to digitalize. This is done by measuring the dynamic capabilities and the entrepreneurial orientation in management and comparing it to the company’s digital maturity. The data was quantitatively by having managers in Sweden completes a survey. A theoretical framework is created to formulate the major theories of the study and relevant hypotheses. To analyze the collected data the multiple regression analysis method was used to see if the variables that any statistical relationship and if the variables have statistical relevance. The results showed that entrepreneurial orientation dint does not have any statistical relevance however dynamic capabilities had a statistical relevance and quite a big effect on the digital maturity of the company. However, a bigger sample for the questioner is suspected to show that entrepreneurial orientation could have had statistical relevance as the sample group for this study was quite small. This study has helpt to fill the gap in knowledge on how management characteristics affect digitalization in companies. The author of this study recommends future research teams conduct more quantitative approaches to get a better picture of how management affects digitalization, by looking at other categorists in management, the important part is that they use a bigger sample size.

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