Collective Digital Transformation

Abstract

Public sector digital transformation is increasingly unfolding across organizational boundaries, as municipalities face growing demands for efficiency, innovation, and equity under conditions of resource constraints and institutional complexity. While inter- organizational collaboration is widely recognized as important in this context, existing research has primarily treated it as a contextual factor, a governance arrangement, or an implementation mechanism. As a result, we have a limited understanding of how digital transformation itself is enacted as a collective, inter-organizational process over time. This thesis addresses this gap by conceptualizing and analyzing the phenomenon of “collective digital transformation”, defined as a distinct mode of digital transformation enacted through sustained collective social action among autonomous public actors operating under distributed authority. Rather than viewing collaboration as a supporting structure around transformation, the thesis conceptualizes transformation itself as collectively produced through ongoing coordination, negotiation, and adaptation across organizational boundaries. The study is guided by the research question: What is collective digital transformation and how is it enacted in the public sector? Empirically, the thesis is grounded in a longitudinal research design centered on inter-municipal collaboration between the Swedish municipalities of Ånge and Sundsvall, collectively referred to as “Ångsvall”. This case is analytically significant for its ambition to achieve digital equality through a form of digital merger, motivated not primarily by efficiency but by a normative commitment to equal access to digital welfare services. This case study, spanning multiple phases of collaboration, is complemented by three additional empirical studies that situate the case within a broader municipal and inter-municipal context. Together, these studies enable an analysis of collective digital transformation under conditions of institutional embeddedness, resource asymmetry, and evolving participation. The thesis adopts a phenomenon-driven and abductive approach in which conceptual development emerges through sustained engagement with the empirical material. Rather than applying theory deductively, theoretical perspectives are progressively mobilized to make sense of the unfolding phenomenon. The analytical framework integrates collective action theory and institutional theory. Collective action theory provides a lens for understanding how cooperation is initiated, coordinated, and sustained among autonomous actors. In contrast, institutional theory explains how such collaboration is shaped by, and in turn reshapes, broader structures of norms, rules, and legitimacy. These two theoretical perspectives support a process-oriented account of collective digital transformation as both a coordinated accomplishment and an evolving institutional process. The findings show that collective digital transformation is not enacted as a bounded project or a linear implementation process, but as an ongoing, recursive process in which shared arrangements are continually established, challenged, and reconfigured. The thesis identifies key dimensions of collective digital transformation and demonstrates how its enactment unfolds through shifting configurations and through the development of inter-organizational arrangements that stabilize and enable continued cooperation. The findings also highlight the interplay between intentional and unintended enactment, showing how both deliberate efforts and gradual changes in practices and expectations over time shape transformation. Based on these insights, the thesis develops a mid-range process theory of collective digital transformation. This theory explains enactment as a generative process in which mechanisms of collective action reconfigure arrangements, which in turn change configurations and trigger tensions that lead to changes in arrangements. The theory advances understanding of digital transformation by shifting the analytical focus from organizations to collectives and from outcomes to the processes of enactment under distributed authority. The thesis contributes to research in two main ways. First, it advances the conceptualization of digital transformation by developing collective digital transformation from an empirically grounded phenomenon into a theoretically articulated construct. Second, it contributes a process-oriented, generative mechanism-based explanation of how digital transformation is enacted across organizational boundaries, thereby highlighting the importance of interdependence, institutional conditions, and temporal dynamics. In doing so, the thesis provides a foundation for future research on collective forms of digital transformation and offers insights for practitioners seeking to design and sustain inter-organizational digital initiatives in the public sector.