I am often asked what digital culture really is. A very good question, because the concept of culture is currently used in companies in connection with digital transformation in an inflationary way. The answer to what it is, is thereby much simpler than the question of its development. In this article, I would like to focus on the more simple question of what digital culture is. I already wrote about culture development in other articles and will continues to do so in the future.
The illustration above briefly summarizes what digital culture is. I take a dynamic cultural approach (Krapf 2016) and understand culture as „how we do things around here“. In this understanding, digital culture has two aspects:
The first aspect encompasses all those influences from digital transformation that directly change our collective patterns of behavior and perception. Virtual forms of collaboration can be mentioned here as an example.
The second aspect encompasses all those patterns of behaviour and perception that we want to change in organisations in order to be successful in a digital world. This concerns not (only) the technological aspect of digital transformation, but (rather) the increasing dynamics of change, which forces us to become more agile (Krapf 2017).
Of course, the link between the direct influence and the rather indirect influence is not entirely distinctive. Nevertheless, this structuring helps to understand quickly what digital culture is.
However, the question of how digital culture can be developed is much more difficult. The first step is to understand what elements a culture contains that makes us more successful in the digital world. I have already developed a framework for this (Krapf 2018). I will discuss in more detail how these elements can be implemented in following articles.
Literature
Krapf, J. (2018). A framework for organizatinal Agility. https://joel-krapf.com/2018/08/07/a-framework-for-organizational-agility/
Krapf, J. (2017). Agilität als Antwort auf die Digitale Transformation. In Synergie – Fachmagazin für Digitalisierung in der Lehre, Nr. 3, S. 32-33
Krapf, J. (2016). Was ist Lernkultur und warum? https://joel-krapf.com/2016/10/09/was-ist-lernkultur-und-warum/
JK - Growing Together 