Organizational Change and Cultural Adaptability in Digital Transformation of University Financial Management

Abstract

A mixed method approach with five sample university representative institutions is employed to explore patterns of organizational change and culture adaptation in digital transformation of university financial management systems. Empirically, we identify three different patterns of organizational change-incremental, breakthrough and hybrid–with the hybrid approach achieving better performance (82% success rate) by leveraging the timing of speed of transformation and the stability of the organization. Cultural adaptivity appears as a key mediating factor which explains 68% of the variance between organizational structures and change outcomes, and the temporal analysis also suggests that cultural measures lead improvements in performance by three to six months. This study introduces a dual-driver framework to understand Digital Transformation as a co-evolutionary process that relies on concomitant developments in organizational structures and cultural systems and presents practical implementation strategies for university leaders who are managing this complex transformation journey.