Digital leaders vs. laggards

: drivers of digital maturity in the german financial services sector

Abstract

Given the rising spending on digital transformation globally, and the existing digital frontier gap across industries, controlled management of the drivers of digital maturity is of key interest to elevate a company’s position. This is because the latter supports digital leadership and thus a competitive and sustainable advantage in the market. For financial services, this is a particular need as a clear driver for this gap has not yet been identified. This dissertation aims at understanding the degree of influencing factors on digital maturity by identifying high impact attributes, particularly for financial services. The paper reveals granular attributes on which an organisation should concentrate when targeting a successful digital transformation, that ideally leads to a high level of digital maturity. For this purpose, expert interviews and an industry survey within Germany were performed as a mixed methodological approach. To determine the most impactful attributes, multiple factors have been gathered and their relationship with digital maturity was investigated qualitatively and statistically. As a combined result, agility, culture, digital priority, a digital vision, savviness, skill development,and a leadership vision were attributes deemed to have a high impact on digital maturity and the difference between leaders and laggards. For a successful consideration of the factors, it is vital to adapt organisational structures and the organisational culture in accordance with the classified attributes. Future research should focus on comparing critical attributes between leading and lagging industries to arrive at a general overview of the drivers of digital maturity.

Date of Award	27 Jan 2022
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	André de Almeida Pinho (Supervisor)