Digital Transformation in Higher Education Management

Organizational Learning and IT Governance

Project Description 

In recent decades digital transformation has fundamentally influenced core elements of higher education institutions: teaching, research, and administration. It involves not only the introduction of new technologies but also organizational, cultural, and functional changes, including the development of new competencies, structures, and ways of working. As digital technologies continue to evolve, universities must continuously adapt and learn in order to respond to changing demands and environments. 

Although universities are drivers of digital innovation through research and education, their own organizational digital transformation process often remains challenging. Digital transformation requires effective processes of organizational learning and appropriate governance structures. At the same time, universities are becoming increasingly interconnected through international collaborations and initiatives such as European University Alliances, creating new requirements for coordination, standardization, and cooperation. 

Against this background, the Institute for Information Management Bremen (ifib), in collaboration with the Technical University of Munich (TUM), investigates how German higher education institutions navigate digital transformation in the context of European University Alliances. The project examines this process through the perspectives of organizational learning and IT governance. 

Project Goals 

Organizational learning in digital transformation 
The project explores how HEIs learn and adapt during digital transformation. It examines how different organizational actors perceive and shape transformation processes, what barriers and competencies influence these processes, and how learning takes place across individual and organizational levels. 

Patterns of IT governance in HEIs 
The project investigates how IT is governed in German universities: who is involved in IT decision-making, which governance processes are established, how compliance is managed, and how institutions respond to external influences, including inter-university networks. 

Integrating organizational learning and IT governance 
The project aims to build a combined theory on organizational learning and IT governance in German higher education institutions in times of digital transformation. The theory will bring together the results from the analysis of organizational learning processes and the implementation of IT governance as well as the analysis of the interrelation with interuniversity networks on German higher education institutions IT management.