Digital(ization) – A Single Construct Amidst Supply Management?

Abstract

Digital technologies pervade products, services and companies. Keywords like Internet-of-Things, or big data analytics made their way on to almost every presentation and promotional slogan, seemingly becoming the backbone for every business organization, including supply management functions. However, the understanding of digital and related terms such as digitalization varies significantly. This research addresses the conceptual gap and seeks to identify characteristics and patterns of digital/digitalization. In addition, the terms digital, digitization and digitalization will be delineated. For this purpose, this research reviews existing literature. Digital as a phenomenon is structured through the application of deductive structure-discovering methods. The findings show the discrepancy between a technical and a managerial understanding. This paper proposes a conceptual model that structures the phenomenon into (1) digitization, (2) media convergence, (3) digitalization and (4) digital transformation.