Impacts of Digitalization: Many Agendas on Different Levels

Abstract

Contemporary organizations investing in digitalization initiatives aim at enhancing their productivity, streamlining their processes, or quite often simply cutting their costs. However, little is known about the results and effectivity, i.e. impacts of how digitalization initiatives create value, for whom or where does this happen, and when. In this paper, we study what kind of impacts different digitalization initiatives in a mid-size city create and for who. We show that the impacts vary for different stakeholders and according to a perspective. Potential impacts diverge for city employees, decision-makers, citizens, organizational activities, and public sector in general. Our findings show that potential impacts are multifaceted and numerous. This has implications to the assessment of the success and benefits of the digitalization initiatives; they vary according to the stakeholders and their expectations. The distinction between the experiment and the standardized service is vital to keep in mind.