The Data Imperative

Book excerpt: Companies across all industries are engaging in digital transformation to harness the power of advanced information technologies. Building on interviews and diverse case studies, this book provides an in-depth look at how data and algorithms are reshaping management practices, organizational structures, corporate culture, and work roles. Henri Schildt develops a broad framework for understanding digitalization not as a technological change but as a new normative mind-set, here called 'the data imperative'. It describes the new managerial ideals that compel companies to pursue digital omniscience and omnipotence-abilities to represent and understand the world through real-time data flow and to control customer experiences, physical equipment, and workers with software. The efforts to complement and replace human expertise with data and smart algorithms are associated with shifts in strategic priorities, adoption of powerful modular architectures, new organizational structures, and the introduction of artificial intelligence into diverse work roles. Surveying the developments in management and the workplace, this book offers an integrative and balanced account of the on-going changes that will continue to affect everyone from executives and professionals to front-line workers.