Abstract: This research focuses on the deep structure of digital organizations, those that ascribe strategic primacy to digital resources. While prior work explores the revolutionary periods of deep structure change (i.e., digital transformation process), little is known about the fundamental choices that characterize a digital organization's deep structure and the activity patterns and mechanisms that sustain the creation and orchestration of digital resources. To address this gap, we conducted a two-year inductive case study of ManuCorp, a decades-old heavy equipment manufacturer that configured as a digital organization. We offer a conceptual starting point for theorizing digital organization management, outlining three interrelated activity patterns that sustain ManuCorp's deep structure: Federating Digital Business Governance, Maintaining an Adaptive Modular Architecture, and Coordinating Dynamic Decomposition. These mutually reinforcing activity patterns operate across institutional, infrastructural, and operational levels.

About Joaquin Rodriguez 

Joaquin Rodriguez is an assistant professor at Grenoble Ecole de Management, France, and an Academic Research Fellow at the MIT Center for Information Systems Research (CISR). He holds a PhD in Information Systems from Louisiana State University, U.S. His research interest is in strategic information systems. His recent research investigates the role of digital resources in enabling digital strategic initiatives and digital transformation. His work has been published in MIS Quarterly, European Journal of Information Systems, Journal of Strategic Information Systems, Information & Management, and MIT Sloan Management Review.