EXPANDING THE CONCEPT OF DIGITAL COMPETENCE A Case Study on How Digital Competence is Portrayed in a Company Transforming to Digital Service Orientation

Abstract

Digitalisation requires new ways for businesses to innovate in order to meet contemporary customer needs. Manufacturers are adopting digital servicebased business models to enhance competitive advantage. To address these challenges companies have to identify, attract and develop digital competence. The purpose of this study is to discuss what kind of digital competence is discussed in the context of digital servitization. The following research question is answered: “ What are the digital competences a digitally servitized manufacturer requires for their employees? ”. In order to inspect the digital competences, a case study was conducted at Volvo Cars Company during spring 2019. Job postings were used as the data source, collected with the method of web scraping. Nearly 700 job postings were analysed through means of directed content analysis, using the digital competence framework by Paschou et al. (2018) as the theoretical point of departure. The results show that a reframing of the framework is necessary to cover digital competence in the case study context, emphasising the multidimensionality of the concept. As an academic contribution, previous theory is extended by introducing a new framework, discovering new digital competences and explaining contextual elements. For practitioners, this study provides a practical tool for analysing the digital competence the organisation should recruit, nurture and develop further.