The Role of Relationships and Networks in Digital Transformation

As digital technologies become increasingly integrated into the construction and real estate sectors, organizations are challenged to navigate shifting interdependencies, processes, and collaborations. This PhD project explores how property owners (public/private) and related business and non-business actors reorganize internally and across their networks both to enable and as a result of digital transformation.

The investigation focuses on how organizations interact and adapt within specific business relationships and in interdependent networks. It identifies patterns of change in how actors collaborate, make decisions, and manage shared resources in driving and responding to digitalization. As such the project investigates how digital transformation is prompting shifts in organizational structures, business relationships, and inter-organizational networks in the built environment. With a particular focus on property owners – both public and private – and related business and non-business actors, the study explores how digital technologies challenge established ways of working and create new demands for coordination and collaboration. Rather than assuming linear or uniform processes of change, the project problematizes how digitalization unfolds in complex networks of both organizational and technical interdependencies – highlighting how organizations respond, interact, and adapt. It analyses internal reorganization as well as changes in inter-organizational relationships, aiming to understand how digital technologies is part of and influence organizational structures, business relationships, and inter-organizational networks.

The study pays particular attention to how organizations navigate interdependencies and manage the uncertainties associated with evolving technical and organizational systems. Through this approach, the project contributes to a deeper understanding of the relational and networked dimensions of digital transformation, offering insights into how change is organized and sustained in a sector characterized by fragmentation, traditional contractual structures and adversarial relationships.
The project provides insight into:

1. the strategic importance of managing business relationships and networks to enable both short-term responsiveness and long-term digital transformation.
2. the role of interdependencies and networks for joint adaptation.
3. the significance of relational capabilities in aligning interests and navigating network complexity.

As such, the project offers a deeper understanding of how relationship and network management can be used strategically to support meaningful and sustained digital change in the built environment.

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