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Digital Transformation Fatigue in Organizations: A Management Viewpoint on Initiative Overload, Employee Resistance, and Declining Strategic Focus
Many organizations are now several years into continuous digital transformation, yet the managerial mood surrounding transformation has changed. What was once framed as renewal, modernization, and strategic reinvention is increasingly experienced as another wave of pressure. Employees, middle managers, and business units are often asked to absorb new systems, new routines, new data practices, and new operating models before earlier initiatives have stabilized. This article argues that digital transformation has reached a point where fatigue itself must be treated as a serious management concern. Digital transformation fatigue refers to a state of organizational exhaustion that emerges when digital change becomes excessive, fragmented, and insufficiently connected to strategic purpose. It is not simply resistance to technology or a temporary decline in motivation. Rather, it reflects the cumulative effect of initiative overload, employee resistance, and declining strategic focus. When these forces interact, organizations may continue launching digital projects while losing the energy, attention, and coherence required to benefit from them. The objective of this viewpoint article is to define and diagnose digital transformation fatigue as a distinct management problem. The article argues that fatigue is often self-inflicted because managers expand the transformation agenda faster than the organization can meaningfully absorb it. It also shows why employee resistance should not be dismissed as irrational opposition, but should be read as a signal that the pace, volume, or meaning of transformation has become mismanaged. The article therefore shifts attention from technology adoption alone to the managerial conditions under which digital change remains sustainable. The article concludes that digital transformation fatigue is real, diagnosable, and manageable. Organizations do not need less ambition, but they do need more disciplined prioritisation, stronger transformation governance, greater employee involvement, and clearer strategic anchoring. The central managerial lesson is that sustainable digital transformation depends not on adding more initiatives, but on orchestrating organizational energy, focus, and commitment. Recognising fatigue is therefore not a retreat from transformation, but a condition for making transformation effective.
Journal of Digital Business and Management Studies
Original Research | Open access | 18 September 2024 | Article: 73

From Human-Centered Management to Human–AI Collaboration: A Viewpoint on Decision Authority in Digital Organizations
Management theory and practice have long been grounded in a human-centered paradigm in which people define goals, interpret information, exercise judgment, and retain final decision authority. Within this paradigm, technology is treated primarily as an instrument that extends human capability while remaining subordinate to managerial intention. This assumption is becoming increasingly fragile in digital organizations. Artificial intelligence systems now classify, recommend, prioritize, predict, allocate, monitor, and sometimes execute decisions at speeds and scales that exceed conventional managerial processes. This viewpoint argues that organizations must move deliberately from human-centered management toward a human–AI collaboration model. The central issue is not whether AI should replace managers, but how decision authority should be allocated, constrained, reviewed, and governed when AI becomes an active participant in organizational decision-making. The article develops an evidence-based viewpoint by synthesizing peer-reviewed and practitioner-oriented articles published. It identifies the limits of human-centered management, articulates a collaboration logic, proposes models of shared decision authority, and derives implications for organizational design and management practice. The shift to human–AI collaboration is not a technological inevitability but a strategic managerial choice. Organizations that fail to design decision authority explicitly risk confusion, resistance, accountability gaps, and underuse of both human judgment and AI capability.
Journal of Digital Business and Management Studies
Original Research | Open access | 18 September 2025 | Article: 84

Why Digital Growth Is Not the Same as Digital Transformation: A Management Viewpoint on Scaling Logic, Customer Acquisition, and Operational Strain
Digital growth and digital transformation are often treated as interchangeable signs of managerial success, yet they describe fundamentally different organizational realities. Digital growth refers to visible expansion in users, transactions, revenue, traffic, and market reach. Digital transformation refers to deeper changes in organizational capabilities, processes, culture, data use, and strategic logic. This article argues that the distinction is not semantic but managerial. The problem is that firms, boards, and investors frequently reward digital growth as though it were proof of transformation. Rapid increases in customer acquisition, app usage, online revenue, or platform participation can create the impression that a firm has become digitally mature. Yet such growth may occur while the organization remains operationally fragile, culturally analogue, technically debt-laden, and strategically dependent on external platforms or paid acquisition channels. The objective of this viewpoint article is to disentangle digital growth from digital transformation and to show why the confusion matters for strategic management. It develops the argument that digital growth can be accelerated through scaling mechanisms, whereas digital transformation requires slower and more difficult capability building. The article therefore challenges the dominant managerial habit of treating growth dashboards as transformation evidence. The article contributes a practical distinction between growth logic and transformation logic. It shows that rapid scaling can coexist with weak transformation, that customer acquisition can mask organizational underdevelopment, and that operational strain often remains invisible until growth slows. The central conclusion is that leaders must measure what they transform, not only what they grow.
Journal of Digital Business and Management Studies
Original Research | Open access | 18 September 2026 | Article: 104