Existence and Intentionality of Digital Transformation in Public Organizations: A Phenomenological Perspective

With the development of information communication technology, digital transformation has gradually become a significant research issue in public administration. Most scholars utilize positivism as the research paradigm to investigate digital transformation-related issues. The research mainstream identifies the reasons for digital transformation adoption as the variables and tries to establish causations. However, these studies can rarely explain how public employees and governments develop their intention for digital transformation. Phenomenology can address this gap by applying the concepts of existence and intentionality to analyze the governmental digital transformation. Phenomenology is one of the research paradigms in public administration and focuses on the subjective world of individuals. The paradigm investigates the interaction between the internal world and social phenomena. One advantage of phenomenology is to deeply understand how people understand the meaning of objects in the social world. It can explain why individuals and organizations decide to adopt digital transformation. This study utilizes theory-based literature analysis to explore the theories of digital transformation adoption. Research results indicate that six clusters of drivers and barriers can affect how individuals and organizations develop their intentionality on digital transformation. By integrating theories of digital transformation and phenomenology, this study proposes an initial conceptual framework to explain how and why public organizations decide to conduct digital transformation. This study expects to introduce another perspective to analyze digital transformation adoption and provides potential research agendas for digital governance issues.