In the past years we have observed enormous adoption and use of digital technologies in almost all domains of human life. In this context, researchers and practitioners have been using the term “digital transformation” (DT) to characterize phenomena related to the changes caused by increased use of digital technologies. The progression and contributions of corresponding discussions significantly depend on a common understanding and conceptualization of DT. Accordingly, the information systems research community has started working toward conceptual clarity. Importantly, the current debate focuses on theoretical contributions by academic researchers. Hence, data on the practitioners’ perspective on DT is missing. Against this background, we investigated general understandings of DT in practice. Our analysis comprises data of N = 529 business decision-makers in the UK. Our results show a significant discrepancy between science (i.e., conceptualizations and definitions of DT in the academic literature) and practice (i.e., business decision-makers’ perceptions and corresponding survey responses). Specifically, for a large proportion of the respondents their decision to classify concrete digitalization examples from the literature as DT or no DT was largely independent of the degree of organizational change caused by the use of digital technologies. This is a surprising result, as high-caliber academic literature proposes this degree to be a critical factor to characterize DT. Another key finding is that a remarkable number of practitioners consider a digitalization initiative as DT based on the mere occurrence of specific buzzwords related to digital technologies in the corresponding descriptions. In particular, the buzzword “digital technology” led the survey participants to classify a definition as instance for DT. We discuss implications of our results and limitations.

在过去的几年里，我们观察到数字技术在人类生活的几乎所有领域都得到了广泛的采用和使用。在这种背景下，研究人员和从业者一直在使用“数字化转型”（DT）一词来描述与数字技术使用增加所引起的变化相关的现象。相应讨论的进展和贡献在很大程度上取决于对DT的共同理解和概念化。因此，信息系统研究界已开始努力澄清概念。重要的是，当前的争论集中在学术研究人员的理论贡献上。因此，缺乏有关从业者对 DT 的看法的数据。在此背景下，我们在实践中调查了对DT的一般理解。我们的分析包含 N = 529 位英国商业决策者的数据。我们的结果显示科学（即学术文献中DT的概念化和定义）和实践（即业务决策者的看法和相应的调查回应）之间存在显着差异。具体来说，对于很大一部分受访者来说，他们将文献中的具体数字化示例分类为数字化或无数字化的决定在很大程度上与数字技术的使用引起的组织变革的程度无关。这是一个令人惊讶的结果，因为高水平的学术文献提出这个程度是表征 DT 的关键因素。另一个重要发现是，大量从业者仅根据相应描述中与数字技术相关的特定流行语的出现就将数字化举措视为DT。特别是，“数字技术”这个流行词引导调查参与者将定义归类为数字技术的实例。我们讨论我们的结果的影响和局限性。