Change Management in the Context of Digital Transformation: A Comparison Between a Theoretical Model and Successful Approaches in Organizations

The COVID pandemic has accelerated the digital transformation (DT) in organizations. Given that organizations with high digital maturity enjoy better financial outcomes than their competitors, budgets for digital transformation have recently increased significantly. This article provides a narrative review of the change management (CM) practices that have proven successful in the context of DT in comparison to the theoretical CM models, with three purposes: firstly, to validate the most effective CM practices for DT, secondly, to identify existing, but unemployed theoretical CM practices that could benefit DT and thirdly, to enhance the field of CM with new tactics that have proven successful in DT. Given the rapid pace of DT during COVID, the organizational change has been done ad-hoc and often without structure or analysis. This paper compares DT and CM theory and practice for the first time in the context of COVID. The findings show that leadership support, engaging people managers, creating change agent networks, efficient communication, training, as well as change reinforcement lead to better DT outcomes. DT could employ more of the tactics suggested by the CM theory in the areas of communication, coaching of people managers, leveraging change agent networks, assessing organizational change readiness and resistance management tactics. CM could adopt new tactics regarding participation of employees, collaboration with external partners and attracting outside talent. Both could benefit from more emphasis on organization culture. The findings represent a good foundation of best practices for DT and for developing a CM model that applies specifically to DT.