Data, resilience, and identity in the digital age

Abstract

In the last decade, the world has become increasingly digitized, with COVID-19 accelerating this trend. According to a McKinsey report, it is estimated that the Internet of Things will add up to $12.4 billion to the world economy by 2030 (Chui et al., 2021). Whilst academic research initially focused on ‘digitization’, whereby analogue processes become digital and connected, current research has shifted to a focus on “digitalization,” whereby digital technologies fundamentally change organizational business models, delivery systems, and infrastructure to change the way products and services are created, delivered, and consumed (Caputo et al., 2021; Holmström et al., 2019; Kharlamov & Parry, 2021; Loonam et al., 2018). Numerous studies focusing on digitalization have been published in various disciplines within business, such as strategic management, operations and supply chain management, international business, marketing, innovation, and broader fields such as cyber security, design and politics, and international relations. Whilst broad topics have been studied, deeper implications for the actors involved, their identity, privacy, and sustained ability to act in the view of radical change, have so far been neglected. In the course of digitalization, basic societal structures have gone askew (Fritzsche, 2021), requiring deeper strategic reflection. For example, COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine have exposed weaknesses in organizational and supply chain resilience (Billiet et al., 2021; Jagtap et al., 2022; Ntasis et al., 2021; Shen & Sun, 2021; Sheth & Uslay, 2023). Research on digital sovereignty has also drawn attention to the challenges for territorial control caused by worldwide data networks and platforms (Glasze et al., 2023; Pohle & Thiel, 2020), which do not only concern political and legal authority on a national level, but also organizational and indivitual decision-making. In domains such as the creative sector, healthcare, or energy supply, the use of data at the individual level could have significant implications for key functions including content ownership, IP rights assignment, provenance and origin of content, and identity of workers, which put extant organizational structure, culture, trust, and professional traditions in question (Egwuonwu et al., 2022; Gauthier et al., 2018; Goudarzi et al., 2022; Tabaghdehi & Kalatian, 2022; Żukowicka-Surma & Fritzsche, 2023). It can be argued that industry, outside the narrow confines of early adopters, remains confused about the potential uses of digital technologies, the data they generate and their implications for resilience and identity on the organizational and individual level. In the manufacturing industry, the implementation of digital technologies has created vulnerabilities in manufacturing systems in areas not previously considered by organizations. For example, digital technology has opened the door for increased cyber-attacks with nearly 50% of all UK manufacturing firms affected by cyber-attacks in 2022 (Make UK, 2022). Confronted with these threats, organizations hesitate to implement new technical designs, carefully weighing advantages against disadvantages. Project activities to explore data-driven operations, smart services, etc. are legion, but mostly remain constrained to specific, controllable applications (Fritzsche & Gölzer, 2021). Radical change that affects organizational strategy, culture, routines, and core competencies, this redefining organizational identity, proceeds very slowly. With respect to individual identity, identity is used to provide participation in everyday life, giving, as example, access to public and financial services and provides voter and legal rights to individuals. With the advent of digital identity, organizations are seeking to create enhanced customer experiences and monetize data associated with individuals. Legal instruments, such as General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), have been put in place to protect individuals' data and identity, but it remains a challenging and contested area. For instance, tensions have been identified in literature and practice with respect to identity, as this frequently has recourse to centralized points of authority or third-party identity providers (Wachter, 2018). Centralization of authority and governance runs counter to individual autonomy, which has led to the development of decentralized self-sovereign solutions, such as those run on distributed ledgers or individual data stores such as the Hub of All Things (Ng et al., 2015). Such data stores still leave enough space for profiling and deep phenoytyping on social media and elsewhere, but increase the users' influence on how it proceeds, affecting participation in everyday life on another level with increasing importance in the digital age. Whilst there remain significant challenges with respect to digital identity, particularly with respect to governance, privacy versus personalization, and self-sovereignty, use of personal data without diminishing the rights of individuals remains a priority as it has the potential to unlock significant economic and social benefit (World Economic Forum, 2012), enabling sustainable development based on resilient social and individual structures. Digitalization, and with it the generation of data, should not be considered panacea for resilience and identity, but it should be considered a revolutionary change that has the potential to make a real impact to society. However, it is evident from the examples provided that challenges remain in its use and deployment for supporting both incremental change in the short term and for more radical change to address the grand challenges in the medium to long term. Against the backdrop of this new era, this Special Issue (SI) of Strategic Change on Data, Resilience and Identity in the Digital Age casts a wide net. The intention for this special issue is to bring together the latest thinking to provide a platform from which future research and industry engagement can begin. In bringing together contributions from different disciplines, perspectives, and countries, this special issue shares understanding of resilience and identity in the digital age, and by doing so, contributes to this journal's mission to “provide a platform for the publication of cutting-edge, original, innovative, and high-quality research at the intersection of strategy, entrepreneurship, and decision-making.” The special issue does this by including research at the intersection of disciplines and by focusing on topics central to the future of organizations, society, and the planet we live on. The guest editorial team and reviewers of selected papers contribute insightful research into resilience and identity in the digital age, which will stimulate the necessary discourse around these exciting and important areas. The original call for papers on the theme “data, resilience and identity in the digital age” was ambitious, as the editors wanted to highlight the state of the art and the multidisciplinary nature of these topics. Further, the aim of this issue is to provide a critical conversation about data, resilience and identify and the entanglement of them in a world moving at a rate of change not seen since the industrial revolution. There are five research articles in this special issue. The articles cover diverse topics, from the value of personal data to security and resilience in manufacturing systems with each having strategic implications for business strategy, operations, and societies as a whole. Maurer and Fritzsche (2023) address a key issue of the ongoing digital transformation in their paper on “Layered Structures of Robustness and Resilience: Evidence from Cybersecurity Projects for Critical Infrastructures in Central Europe.” For business and society to function properly in the digital age, information systems must be protected against cybercrime, warfare, and other disruptive forces. Mauer and Fritzsche argue that protective measures can have contradictory consequences on different systemic layers. If all efforts are focused on increasing the robustness and resilience of one specific subsystem, higher systemic structures may suffer, as they may become limited in their ability to respond dynamically to external disturbances. Maurer and Fritzsche present findings from a multiple case study of publicly funded Central European cybersecurity projects to protect critical infrastructure in society. Using a framework introduced by Maurer and Lechner (2015), they distinguish seven different facets of organizational robustness and resilience. They find that most cybersecurity projects are focused on facets at a low systemic level, while general questions regarding the robustness and resilience of critical infrastructures of societies are not addressed. Maurer and Fritzsche's work has direct implications for public policy-making and project management. It calls for a change in strategy towards a better account of different systemic layers in infrastructure protection. Efforts to increase the resilience of an IT system must be considered in reference to the system dynamics of organizations and society in general, which may require changes of sub-system structures. In a similar vein to Maurer and Fritzsche (2023), Fowler et al. (2023) focus on the topic of resilience in the context of smart manufacturing systems. Resilience in smart manufacturing systems is becoming increasingly important, with nearly half of all UK manufacturers facing a cyber-attack during 2022 (Make UK, 2022). Resilience operates at the intersection of cyber systems engineering and operations management. Through a review of the literature, they identified different factors for resilience, such as adaptability, robustness, and flexibility, that can be used as an organizing framework through which future studies on resilience for smart manufacturing can be conducted. They also identified incentives to resilience by design and present a range of digital technologies that can be used to deliver novel cyber-physical production systems. Their conceptual review identified that the greatest impact for manufacturing resilience from digital technologies is likely to be at the micro level (i.e., production within the firm). They demonstrate the need for a better sociotechnical understanding of resilience and call on the research community to address the challenges around (1) skilling and reskilling the workforce for smart manufacturing, (2) addressing cyber security within smart manufacturing systems, and (3) from a sociotechnical perspective, the deployment and use of digital twins from a security, operations, and decision-making perspective. They conclude their paper by demonstrating the need for greater interdisciplinary research and teaching, whereby engineers of the future will require disciplinary knowledge from business and management about resilience in smart manufacturing systems. In their paper, “The data sharing decision: perception and intention in healthcare” Kharlamov, and Parry (2023) examine how individuals decide to share, or otherwise, their healthcare data. Healthcare data are a context of interest, as health data are perceived to be very sensitive. An economic view of exchange places data and privacy as economic goods in markets. Maintaining information asymmetry allows organizations to maintain access to client data and commercially benefit from that data. The research was motivated by practice, with a healthcare organization seeking to act ethically by understanding their patient's decision process and intentions in order to gain informed consent from patients who are open to share their healthcare data. A number of different metrics were identified from literature and employed to capture insight into individual's perception and intention to share their data. Their findings showing that despite the proliferation of metrics employed in literature just two measures may be all that is required to understand an individual's intentions, based on risk and benefit. When organizations clearly and honestly state the risks and benefits, individuals can reach an informed decision on whether to consent to share their data, or not. However, despite the espoused primacy of healthcare data, the paper suggests individuals most often willingly share. Reasons for this are discussed, identifying benevolence, naivety, or ignorance as factors. Despite potentially being more expert in this area, the authors noted their own naivety during the study. They realized their own healthcare data was shared more than they had understood, which suggests that organizations are not sufficiently clear in their data-sharing practices. Söldner's (2023) contribution to this special issue, “In-Between Self-Marketing and Collaboration: Researcher Identity Formation in the Usage of Academic Social Network Sites” examines how academic social networking sites (ASNS) enable scholars to share documents, discuss, and engage in common activities. ASNS allow scholars to present themselves to a larger audience and highlight their skills and their successes, potentially playing an important role in the development of academic careers. Combining Social Influence with Uses and Gratifications Theory, Söldner investigates ASNS usage using the example of a management research community. Expanding earlier work by Meishar-Tal and Pieterse (2017), he finds that ASNS differ significantly from other social networking sites regarding the motivations and objectives of the users. ASNS users are concerned with self-promotion and look to enhance their confidence and self-esteem, as well as community building with other scholars. Söldner's work has implications for the study of changing labor markets in the digital age, showing increased options for skilled workers to shape their own professional identities. Furthermore, platform designers and operators can learn from this study how the future design of ASNS can proceed as an enablement of conventional social networking (Park et al., 2009) and collaborative interactions, as they are known from open innovation (Moeslein and Fritzsche, 2018). “Data are in the Eye of the Beholder: Co-creating the Value of Personal Data” by Stelmaszak and Parry (2023) find that the value of data differs between firm, intermediary, and customer. The differences in perception are deep seated, relating to fundamental ontological interpretations of what data are. A challenge is in the interpretation of value of data, with financial worth the predominant interpretation of value in analysis. In this work, further insights were found though discussion of the value of data in its use. Firms were found to view data as a means to an ends, namely achieving their business outcome. It was not specific individual data, but aggregated data that were valued, as that was perceived to lead to market insight. In the case example provided the intermediary was a firm that provided data storage, transfer, and processing services. The intermediary required data to flow as value is achieved when data was used, so the value of data was therefore as a medium of exchange. Finally, the customer was interested in how their data create value for them, but their perception of data was not that of its financial worth. As with the work of Kharlamov et al., value resulted from a calculus, with customers sharing data where net benefit was perceived. The paper notes that this “dissonance in the perceptions of value” of data between different parties is not recognized and there is potential for both further research by academics, and novel value proposition design by organizations to exploit this opportunity. The papers show the need for strategic reflection and interdisciplinary work on the implementation of digital technology for resilience and identity in a world characterized by grand challenges. Workplaces focus on user operations and perceptions of value, risk, and benefits, but also the reference systems in which information systems are addressed in the implementation efforts. Mere technical approaches to solution design are insufficient when it comes to more complex problems in society, such as critical infrastructure protection, healthcare, personal data, and resilient industrial operations, but also professional identity development and artistic content production. A managerial perspective is necessary to understand the wider implications of systems design, assess opportunities and threats, and plan their use of digital technologies and how they will implement them appropriately. As such, there are several areas for future research. As organizations increasingly rely on digital technologies to improve their operational efficiency, product and service quality, supply chain coordination, responsiveness, and visibility (Cui et al., 2022), the potential for cyber-attacks increases exponentially. The cost of these attacks is not mere inconveniences, but according to an IBM report in 2022 climbed to an average of $4.47 million, lead to loss of intellectual property, and can lead to the failure of critical systems (Kumar & Mallipeddi, 2022). As the sophistication of attackers improves, manufacturers should expect to see the costs of these attacks rise if efforts to create resilient manufacturing systems continue to fall short of the growth in cyberattacks. The challenge offers fruitful areas for research at the intersection of cyber systems engineering, operations, and strategic management. Research in this area may address questions such as: how do organizations integrate cyber resilience into their operations strategy? How can organizations incorporate resilience-by-design as a principle in the development of their operations and supply chains? How do manufacturers assess the cyber resilience of their own production facilities and that of their supply chain? And finally, what can management scholars learn from other disciplines with respect to the design and development of resilient, robust, and regenerative systems? Identity empowers individuals and allows them to participate in everyday life. To do so, individuals must provide information about themselves to form and present their identity to others and to organizations. Through their identity, individuals can participate in everyday democracy and society through voting rights, legal rights, school, healthcare, financial services, and so on. As the digital economy grows and information about individuals exponentially increases through the proliferation in volume and variety of data (Cappa et al., 2020), organizations are becoming increasingly customer orientated and many recognize that digital identity can provide novel insights into individual preference and enhance the customer experience (Sheik et al., 2021). Organizations are becoming more customer-centric through the use of individuals personal data. The privacy paradox finds that whilst individuals express a desire for greater privacy, their actual behaviors do little to protect their privacy as they pursue greater personalization of products/services. This is of particular concern as identity is employed to enable only appropriate actors' access to a system. If people are giving away data that includes identity it becomes difficult to secure a system. The development of self-sovereign systems provides individuals greater control over their data with an ability to share personal data that is privacy preserving (Mühle et al., 2018). However, in giving individuals control, it also potentially allows them to give away all their data, as is observed in the paradox. Identity and the security of data are a significant sociotechnical challenge to address, giving rise to a number of potential research questions, including: How do we understand user wants, needs, and capabilities to enable the design of safe digital systems? How do digital systems capture and integrate multidisciplinary issues such as ethics and morals, business model, and value of data, user technical abilities, and cyber threats? And how do organizations design their offerings to provide an appropriate balance between centralized control and self-sovereignty? We began this editorial by noting the pace at which the world is digitalizing and the interest this is generating in both industry and academia. At the time of writing, the world has embraced digitalization and recognizes that the change it brings may be as significant as the industrial revolution. Academia has not kept pace with industry, and as a result, research in the context of data, resilience and identity is often practice led. This special issue sought to address this and contribute to the vision of Strategic Change by balancing theory driven work with with issues faced in practice today through a multi- and interdisciplinary lens (Caputo, 2023). The articles that make up this special issue principally relate to what and how questions, with some context in the form of healthcare, critical infrastructure, and manufacturing systems, resulting in descriptive accounts of the phenomena studied. This outcome reflects a field in the nascent stages of theory building. Whilst this special issue achieved, for the most part, its aim of publishing work from multiple disciplines, one consequence of this for a field it is the early stages of theoretical development is that too many descriptions, factors, and definitions can be introduced, leading the conceptual competition, alternative micronarratives, and redundancy. Whilst there is evidence of different disciplinary definitions and vocabularies converging, as demonstrated by Maurer and Fritzsche (2023) and Fowler et al.'s (2023) definitions of resilience, there is still a need to harmonize vocabularies and share definitions of theoretical constructs. This is even more important in the context of data, resilience, and identity in the digital age, as they are inherently multidisciplinary topics. Should definitions, vocabularies, and theoretical constructs not harmonize across disciplines, academic research will, at best, continue to suggest theoretical avenues for the future (Edmondson & McManus, 2007), and will struggle to keep pace with industry in a fast changing environment. Whilst achieving this in the short term is difficult, the editors are encouraged by the work published in this special issue and ongoing work elsewhere at the intersection of academia and practice, leaving us hopeful academia can provide insights that have impact on data, resilience and identity in the digital age. Our last task as guest editors of this special issue is to gratefully acknowledge the contribution of the editorial team at Strategic Change, in particular Andrea Caputo, and of the anonymous reviewers of the submissions to the special issue, without their work and their constructive input to the review process this special issue would not have been possible. The authors declare no conflicts of interest. Dr Phil Davies is a Senior Lecturer in Operations Management at the University of Bristol Business School, University of Bristol. His research covers topics such as servitization, supply chain resilience and delivery system design. For supply chain resilience, he has a particular interest in additive manufacturing an responsive systems and for delivery system design, he has a particular interest in modular service design and delivery. Prof. Dr. Albrecht Fritzsche is full professor at Rabat Business School, Morocco, where he co-ordinates the interdisciplinary research group on innovation and complexity management for sustainable transitions and serves as senior scholar in the strategy and management department. Prof. Fritzsche holds doctoral degrees in industrial economics and philosophy. He has worked for many years as a systems expert and project leader in the automotive industry and as a strategy consultant with various assignments in Germany, China and other countries. Prof. Fritzsche has received the FAU Habilitation Award 2020 for his research on innovation management and the Shin Research Excellence Award in 2018 for his work on digital agendas in the insurance industry. He regularly teaches PhD courses in different countries worldwide. Professor Glenn Parry is a Professor of Digital Transformation and Head of the Department of Digital Economy, Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Surrey Business School, University of Surrey. He is CoDirector of the Next Stage Digital Economy Centre in the Decentralized Digital Economy (DECaDE). Professor Parry's work is characterized by an approach of partnering with organizations to develop creative solutions to challenges. He is interested in the effect of digital technology on business models, value, servitization and supply chain visibility. He has managed research consortia with in the automotive, aerospace, music and construction industries and has published and edited numerous international journals. Dr Zena Wood is an Associate Professor in Digital Economy and Director of the Defence Data Research centre (DDRC). She has been a fellow of the Alan Turing Institute (ATI) since October 2021. Zena joined the Initiative for the Digital Economy (INDEX) in April 2019 and is based in their offices in South London. Prior to this she was employed by the University of Greenwich as a Senior Lecturer in Spatial Informatics. Zena's background is in Computer Science with her research focusing on how techniques from applied ontology and spatiotemporal reasoning can be used to derive value from datasets that would help us understand the impact of digital transformation within the Digital Economy. She is particularly interested in the overlap between methods that can be applied to datasets related to physical and non-physical environments. Most of her research is interdisciplinary involving collaborations with experts from geography, psychology and business. The research in the physical world focuses on the development of representation, and data analytic, methods to identify and understand collective phenomena (i.e., groups of individuals that we wish to consider as one entity) within spatiotemporal datasets. Zena's most recent research has focused on digital transformation within the financial services sector, particularly those companies moving towards a servitization business model (e.g., a move from a product-based offering to a service-based offering). NA.