JSR

Digital transformation has become a strategic priority for the enterprises, the public organizations, and the cities. However, it remains unanswered whether business and city digital transformation strategies emerged mainly during the Covid-19 pandemic or independently while it is questioned whether organizations and cities that prioritized digital transformation before the epidemic had updated their strategies to deal with the outbreak. The main objective of this paper is to investigate the types of emergent digital transformation strategies that were caused both to the local business ecosystems and to cities due to the pandemic. This study uses a multi-method approach, including bibliometric analyses of more than 30,000 records that were produced during the outbreak to determine the effects of Covid-19 pandemic on the business and city digital transformation strategies. Findings uncover the digital transformation emergent strategic changes and highlight important trends, like the migration of the production supply chains with digital transformation. Moreover, this article uses the case study method on the European Intelligent Cities Challenge initiative, via analyzing the digital transformation strategies of the 120 participating cities, which had defined their digital transformation strategic prioritiesbefore the outbreak. The analysis shows that the pandemic did not significantly caused emergent digital transformation strategies. In general, this article’s findings do not prove a causal relationship between the pandemic and city/organization digital transformation strategies but provide some useful evidence about the emergent strategic responses that are triggered by crises like the epidemic.Background: This article explores the emergence and updates of digital transformation strategies (emergent digital transformation strategies) of businesses and cities due to the covid-19 outbreak.

business; Covid-19; digital transformation; emergent strategy; intelligent cities; smart cities; strategy