MIT Sloan Management Review Article on Cracking the Culture Code for Successful Digital Transformation

Digital transformation transcends technology and business models. Organizational culture also plays a critical role in successfully leading an organization into the digital era; indeed, the success of a digital transformation relies on a deep understanding of the intricacies of culture. But few business leaders fully understand how a company’s culture changes during a digital transformation — and, more importantly, how it doesn’t change.

Consider the case of Maersk, the Danish shipping and integrated logistics company, which has been undergoing a significant digital transformation. Those efforts, which took off when Jim Hagemann Snabe became chairman of the board in 2016, entailed collaborating on blockchain with IBM and providing digital platforms to customers. Internal cultural tensions at Maersk became apparent late in 2021, when Søren Vind, a senior engineering manager and head of forecasting, had a public disagreement about the company’s identity with a veteran Maersk sea captain who serves as the employee representative on the board. In an interview with a Danish publication, Vind argued that Maersk “used to be an industrial company that had technology on [the] side” but had become “a technology company where we have some physical devices we need to move around.” Captain Thomas Lindegaard Madsen responded in a public LinkedIn post — subsequently edited to defuse his criticism — that read, “I am very sorry, but I will have to correct you.” Pointing out that the maritime business contributed 78% of group revenue and that the group has 12,000 seafarers, the captain declared, “We are NOT a tech company who ‘happens’ to operate ships.”

About the Author

Carsten Lund Pedersen is associate professor in digital transformation at the IT University of Copenhagen in Denmark and coeditor of the book Big Data in Small Business: Data-Driven Growth in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2021).

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