Digital transformation is a critical driver for enhancing processes, business models, and strategies, particularly in large telecommunication companies, ensuring their competitive survival in today’s digital era. Central to this transformation is fostering a digital culture, yet comprehensive research offering a practical framework for its development and implementation is limited. This study investigates effective mechanisms for cultivating a digital culture in major telecom firms.
Conducted from July 2023 to October 2025, the research followed a three-stage strategy. First, a meta-synthesis of prior studies established an initial conceptual framework. Second, semi-structured interviews with 28 digital transformation experts tailored and enriched this framework for the telecom sector. Finally, the DEMATEL method analyzed cause-and-effect relationships among the identified mechanisms and prioritized them.
The study identified key mechanisms across several domains: defining the desired culture, facilitating vision-based discussions, assessing current cultural status, preparing the organization for change, reducing resistance, securing resources, empowering and training employees, reinforcing accountability, reengineering legacy systems and aligning processes, monitoring and enhancing culture, establishing knowledge-sharing networks, promoting internal success stories, designing faster decision-making processes, and developing a digital work environment.
This structured approach provides organizations with a systematic and effective pathway to develop a digital culture, enabling them to implement digital transformation successfully and sustain long-term competitive advantage.