Mälardalen University

Program: International Business Management

Course: FOA162. Research Methods and Academic Writing
Assignment: INL1, 1,5 credits
Date of submission: 10 May 2022

INL1
Effects of digital solutions for business & Organizations
Emelie Berglund
Introduction

Everyday new digital solutions are presented to firms and organizations and digitalization in
general has evolved over the last couple of years.
The impact, challenges and problems of digital solutions the restaurant industry could face
will be presented below. Along with a media review and a preposition of how a study on this
subject could be done and how data would be collected

Assignment A
The business environment is constantly evolving, especially within the digital frames.
Businesses need to implement new strategies and adapt to the new digital environment in
order to survive. Since “changes come by force not by choice” and also of course by
following the new opportunities. (Moşteanu et al, 2020)
The study underlines the importance of having a digital development team to fully integrate
digitalization throughout the entire organization, in order for change to occur systematically.
The main purpose of this team is to have digital experts lead key initiatives, stimulate digital
innovation, provide framework and encourage and support others to lead their teams in a
digital direction. The main advantages of digitalization in business is the competitive
advantage, reduced costs and improvement in the decision-making process.

The introduction of platforms and ecosystem

Digital solutions within the food industry are common nowadays, they have impacted the
industry a lot the last couple of years. Restaurants now have the possibility to use a third
party platform and are described as an ecosystem of a gig-economy. (Tuco et al, 2021) This
ecosystem consists of components; Platform, Restaurant, Courier and customer. The study
showed how important the cooperation between restaurant and courier is and how they are
interdependent of each other, and how this cooperation is easily affected by the design of the
platform. It is explained in that study that restaurants subscribe to a delivery service, but the
couriers are self-employed and can choose whenever they want to work. The couriers often
aim to deliver as many orders as possible at the time to earn money for the time spent, which
puts a higher pressure on them since they don't get paid per hour but per order delivered.
Which is great for the restaurants and the platform, it means that the food is delivered warm
and fresh and they will get a higher rating for fast service, which benefits all parts. It is
mentioned how waiting times are one of the biggest issues with this type of digitalization, in
order to reduce the amount that both restaurants and couriers can rate each other after each
delivery. If the courier has to wait for the food they lose time that could be used to generate
money somewhere else. And if the courier is late, it hurts the reputation and customer
relationship with the restaurant if the quality of the food is lacking. The ecosystem is driving
organizational change and all participants rely on each other.
Organizational change
In relation to the food and restaurant industry, there Organizational development is normally
incremental and planned changes in organizations. Based on collected intelligence and data.
Weick (Weick et al, 1999) argues the need to utilize different methods for organizational
change:
The episodic change: The larger non frequent change to an organization, that may seem
disruptive and strategic and is often rationalized by a disruptive change in the market. It may
also be described as a transformative change.
Continuous change: is the incremental and continuous changes that is argued in the previous
article as well. This method is driving change almost daily and can be equally disruptive and
transformative when based on insights and decision making.

Assignment B
It is commonly argued that organizational theories can support the analytical development
and provide aid in the design of indicators, evaluate their construction, and assess the
effectiveness. A wide range of different theories are available to adopt and develop, This
section is focusing on the Big 4. (Rhydderch et al, 2004)
Systems theory, organizational development, social worlds theory, and complexity theory will
aid our understanding of how indicators work in prompting quality improvements and why
they on occasion fail to do so.

Systems Theory
System theory implies that all parts of the organization are interrelated and has to be
considered when improving one part of the organization. The subsystems are not directly
related but together they make the organization. This approach works to identify
complications early and to prevent misunderstandings and failure. And in the era of
digitalization, the systems theory also expands to the full ecosystem as all actors are
interconnected. In relation to the restaurant industry it can be exemplified by a small decision
that is made by a restaurant, for example changed service hours. The platform users may
have an expectation on the platform in terms of service availability, and if individual
restaurants are changing then the ecosystem may become unstable and the overall
customer satisfaction reduced.

Complexity Theory
The complexity theory gives guidance around the balance between automatic feedback loops
that are automatically changing the platform and its products and the need for human review
and interaction. And how to obtain the right balance. In relation to the food industry this can
be understood as: The online menu of an established restaurant will seamlessly be allowed to
be changed to prompt the most popular choices for all users, based on purchase data and
other digital footprints such as searches. The restaurant is famous in the local society for a
couple of signature courses, the restaurant leadership should actively review the modification
of the menu before these are allowed to be excluded or down prioritized on the digital
platform.
Social Theory
Social theory investigates how the two different social worlds, the physical and the digital,
co-exist and how to make sure that indications from one social world are not used in
decision-making for the other social world. The exception for this is the indicators that are
relevant in both social worlds.
One application of this theory in the restaurant industry is in the aspect of reviews. For
example, a negative review from an online user can result from other elements of the
ecosystem: an unresponsive platform, delayed delivery, or poor heating during transportation.
Likewise, a negative review in a physical restaurant can be the result of an unattended waiter
or loud music. However, if the review is indeed related to food quality, then it is relevant in
both social worlds.

Organizational development
In relation to the food and restaurant industry, their Organizational development is normally
incremental and planned changes in organizations. Based on collected intelligence and data.
The theory is that the human ability to embrace change is better if it can be demonstrated that
the change will support the business goals.
As described in assignment A, Weick outlines two different methods of organizational
change. It appears to us that the continuous change method has some significant advantages
in the digital business model. There have been many changes as a result of digitalization over
the past years. Many of them should have been possible to make timely and based on online
data and customer behavior, and have been incremental steps and changes so any food
enterprise that has adopted this agile way of organizational change should be well positioned
for employee satisfaction and business results.

Assignment C
Using a mixed method, a combination of qualitative and quantitative research. Using several
methods will increase the chance of finding an answer to the research question (Saunders
2009, p152)

Research Question; Is it preferable for all restaurants to offer a digital delivery service?
Motivation for question: As the digitalization is disrupting the restaurant business in a way
that online and home delivery is a change by force, it would be interesting to understand if
there are restaurants that would actually be harmed by this change.

In-depth interviews should be used to gain a deep understanding of the main problems and
benefits of using a digital delivery service. These interviews aim to generate the major
findings of this study. To get as valid data as possible we need to cover large parts of our
population, since the study aims to answer if digital delivery is preferred for every restaurant.
Restaurant Owners need to be contacted and set up for individual or smaller group
interviews. This way we are able to ask follow-up questions, explain the questions and have
discussions on the subject. This will always gain more data than questionnaires or any form
of quantitative research. (Saunders 2009, p343) (Saunders 2009, p353)

By collecting data by using the sampling method, findings can be generated that represent the
entire target group and get an overview of the general experiences and opinions on our
subject. Sampling is time consuming since it is important to make sure that the data is
reliable, valid and representative. The data collecting instrument has to be well thought out
and well functioning, the response rate also needs to be considered. Then the results and
findings needs to be analyzed.(Saunders 2009, p144). I would choose a sample with 385
responses to achive the 95% confidence interval.

Secondary data should be used as complementary data to the previously mentioned

techniques. This data provides information about the third-party platform that could be of
interest for this study to illustrate the findings. (Saunders 2009, p259)
References

Moşteanu.N.R, Faccia.A, Cavaliere.L.P.L“Digitalization and Green Economy - changes of

business perspectives”, p.108-112, (2020)
https://dl-acm-org.ep.bib.mdh.se/doi/10.1145/3416921.3416929

Tuco.C, Boulard. C, Calleau.R, Shreepriya. S, “Food Delivery Eco-System: When Platforms

Get Enterprises and Gig-Workers to Implicitly Cooperate”, (2021)

https://dl-acm-org.ep.bib.mdh.se/doi/10.1145/3462204.3481757

Weick, K. E, Quinn, R. E. ”Organizational change and development”, Scholary Journal,

(1999)

https://www.proquest.com/docview/205830411?accountid=12245&parentSessionId=f5Oyzr
YX4v1msK5G6%2Fz%2B3BhxUIBQqviC7jCwby8A0XE%3D&pq-origsite=primo

M Rhydderch, G Elwyn, M Marshall (2004) “Organizational change theory and the use of
indicators in general practice”
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/qshc.2003.006536

Grobman.M. Gary, “COMPLEXITY THEORY: A NEW WAY TO LOOK AT ORGANIZATIONAL

CHANGE”,(2006)
https://www.jstor.org/stable/41288239?casa_token=5rFgPC5_Ta4AAAAA%3A3SSKb1ZHjcrs
M6yoDvpPdPt5Ynkk87Z451Ipp-6V6RnLSIJ6yp0UC5ZHIwD-LWxJyqqsKKzrQ6JldjL1bifgPex
EJunKrH6fRy4ERhf1LgNySwTEWYQxkQ&seq=1

Research methods for business students” fifth edition, Saunders.M, Lewis.P, Thornhill.A
2009