The Gordian Knot of Practicing Digital Transformation: Coping with Emergent Paradoxes in Ambidextrous Organizing Structures*

Despite increasing scholarly attention on digital transformation, there are only limited micro‐level insights into how incumbent firms organize and manage their digital transformation efforts on a daily basis. Through a longitudinal, exploratory qualitative case study of a large firm, this article investigates how organizational members respond to an ambidextrous organizing model designed to accelerate digital innovations. The firm relied on a hybrid model of separation and integration to organize and manage its digital transformation efforts. This study unfolds the implications and consequences of such a model at the micro‐level. By applying a paradox lens, it shows how the coping actions of organizational members affected the digital transformation. The article illustrates how the hybrid organizing model led to the emergence of three paradoxes at the organizational level (paradoxes of organizing, attention, and knowledge sharing) that organizational members had to cope with. It shows how organizational members, through their coping with these paradoxes, indirectly affected the organizing model by altering its original design; and how the management, influenced by these learnings, subsequently adapted the model to enable a better sustainability over time. Overall, the findings show and explain why organizing for digital transformation is a particularly complex and paradoxical endeavor. They also provide important insights to managers and organizational developers, helping them to become aware of possible tensions in their organizing efforts as well as of coping strategies and practices to tackle these tensions. Finally, the article suggests different paths for further research in digital transformation and digital innovation from a micro‐level perspective.     

An assessment of the psychometric properties of the Perceived Stress Scale-10 (PSS10) with a U.S. public accounting sample

Utilizing a convenience sample of 305 professional staff from seven public accounting firms, this study examined: a) the factor structure of the Perceived Stress Scale-10 (PSS10; Cohen & Williamson, 1988); b) the invariance of its factor structure; c) the scale's reliability; and, d) its convergent and divergent validity. Our analyses support a structure with two primary factors, (General Distress and Ability-to-Cope), which load on a single second order factor, Perceived Stress, regardless of gender. Spearman–Brown reliability coefficients, item-total correlations, and coefficient alphas each supported the reliability of the items loading on the full scale as well as on each of the two primary factors. Collectively, these findings provide compelling evidence in support of the PSS10 as a perceived stress measure for accounting professionals. However, more research is warranted to investigate the efficacy of a reduced six-item version of the instrument.     

The Discriminating Beta: Prices and Capacity with Correlated Demands

Uniform customer‐class pricing can do much of the work of congestion‐based or time‐of‐day pricing in communication or wireless networks. A monopolist exploits differences in the stochastic characteristics of demands. If demands are correlated and the firm faces a capacity constraint, then it can set prices to reduce the variability of aggregate demand, thereby reducing the probability of excess demand and the associated service quality deterioration. Demands that covary negatively with aggregate demand are valuable to the firm in much the same way that securities that covary negatively with the market are valuable in a stock portfolio. Customer classes that exhibit low covariance with aggregate demand realize lower optimal prices. Optimal capacity is also affected by these covariances. As long as demands are not perfectly positively correlated, expected costs of joint production are less than expected costs of serving demands separately.