Change must come from within: Study of digital transformation in construction client organizations

Digital transformation strategies in various industries are shifting stakeholders' expectations regarding the construction sector's capacity to provide efficient and high-value digital solutions. In response, construction organizations are adopting digital technologies to enhance the efficiency, effectiveness, and overall quality of their design, operations and project delivery. Despite the growing prevalence of digital technologies, the construction sector lags in its effective adoption and benefit realization. The construction literature predominantly addresses a direct link between the use of digital technology and its attributed benefits, overlooking the critical dimension of intraorganizational change to realize them. A notable gap exists in the systematic understanding of how construction organizations define and approach digital transformation in their daily practices and how it can be conceptualized for the construction sector. This study pivots toward exploring organizational-level impacts of digital technology implementation and delves into the evolution of strategic assumptions and management practices essential for realizing digital transformation, a concept developed in the management and information system literature. Because construction client organizations play a pivotal role in driving industry-wide change, 24 experts from six organizations across four countries were interviewed by employing an exploratory qualitative research approach. The findings underscore a critical insight: the effectiveness of digital technology implementation in construction hinges significantly on an organization's readiness to embrace holistic, internal change. This study proposes a conceptual model centered on innovation management, business transformation, data precedence, change leadership, and digital governance, framing these as the essential elements for harnessing the full potential of digital technology. This study contributes to the evolving discussion of digital transformation in the construction sector, highlighting that fundamental changes cannot solely be imposed through external forces; instead, they must originate internally-"change must come from within."