Digital transformation has immense significance in the digital era and has garnered extensive research. Understandings of digital transformation are generally situated within an organizational context. In the era of everyday computing, we need a broader understanding of digital transformation as digital technologies transform social institutions and activities beyond organizations. Extensive public discourse about a phenomenon reveals the meaning of the phenomenon that is socially constructed by large community members. Therefore, the socially constructed meaning of digital transformation by a broader community, not just confined to organizational settings, may reveal more insights and consequently contribute to a better understanding of this phenomenon.

In this dissertation, I first asked: what is the socially constructed meaning of digital transformation in public discourse? To answer this question, I collected 6.8 million tweets “talking” about digital transformation as the discourse content. I drew on theoretical lenses of sociomaterial practice, digital objects, and rationality and combined machine learning coding with manual coding to the final text corpus to extract the meaning. The coding results surfaced a rich description of digital transformation, suggesting a new account of the phenomenon: digital transformation is a global rationalization of society catalyzed by digital technologies.

To theoretically strengthen this new account of digital transformation, I explored the second research question: How do digital technologies catalyze the rationalization of social activities? To answer this research question, I leveraged the patterns observed from addressing my first research question—digital technologies, social activities, and manifestations of activity rationalities—for further conceptualization, interpretation, and argumentation. Specifically, I extended the existing conceptualization of digital objects and digital materiality by categorizing material bearers into carriers, processors, transmitters, and converters, categorizing nonmaterial bearers into creators and organizers, and creating an abstraction of the corresponding affordances. I also conceptualized three types of social activities and the main social roles of bitstring in these activities. Based on these conceptualizations, I analyzed and interpreted the topic results and identified six activity transformation processes. I also argued how the digital technology affordances may facilitate these transformation processes and how these transformation processes may lead to higher levels of technical, substantive, communicative, and emancipatory rationalities. Based on these analyses, conceptualizations, interpretations, and argumentations, I propose a new theory of digital transformation.

This new theory posits that digital transformation is a global rationalization of society catalyzed by digital technologies. Specifically, digital technology affordances facilitate six activity transformation processes toward technological, substantive, communicative, and emancipatory rationalities. This new theory accentuates digital transformation’s societal change nature and global scope, the critical role of digital technology affordances, and how this phenomenon drives further rationalization of society. While complementing existing perspectives on digital transformation, this new theory provides a new angle to see digital transformation in a broader perspective and social context, enhancing our understanding of this phenomenon. I conclude this dissertation by discussing the contributions of the new theory of digital transformation to relevant literature and its implications for individuals, business managers, and policymakers.