Browsing by Author "Chaila, Benedict"

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    Exploring the digital maturity of a global engineering firm in the South African mining industry
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023) Chaila, Benedict; Ochara, Nixon Muganda
    The mining sector has long been perceived as a conservative innovation industry which is labour-intensive. However, this notion is rapidly changing, based on the sector's level of innovation and digital disruption. Studies show that digital technologies increase a firm's profits by 20% to 45%. Given this digital shift, most companies in the mining sector are investing heavily in digital transformation to drive growth and increase efficiencies. According to reports by Minerals Council South Africa and PwC, digital is becoming a game changer in the South African mining industry by increasing the use of innovative and latest technologies to run more efficient operations, improve health and safety, reduce maintenance and extraction costs, as well as bringing about skills improvement. Despite visible positive results, the South African mining industry's digital transformation journey has not been smooth. While some companies have successfully embraced digital transformation to enable sustainable business growth and efficiency, others have grappled with achieving the same results. The challenge for most organisations is to justify the massive investments by demonstrating the impact of digital maturity on the sustainable competitive advantage of their organisations. Therefore, this study aims to explore the effect of digital maturity on an organisation's sustainable competitive advantage through the lens of the dynamic capability theory. The literature review focused on digital transformation and maturity, sustainable competitive advantage and the dynamic capability theoretical framework. The research design method was qualitative; data collection was through semi-structured interviews with eight portfolio managers, five digital managers and the chief information officer selected from within the organisation. The data analysis was based on the thematic analysis process to deliver the initial codes, initial themes and the final themes emerging from the study. The study's findings demonstrate that mining organisations using dynamic capabilities (sensing, seizing and transforming) have a higher digital maturity, enabling the agility to scan and explore market and technology opportunities better than organisations with low digital maturity. They also have a high renewal and reconfiguration rate that poise them to successfully take advantage of the market and technology opportunities and respond to threats. Therefore, high­ level dynamic capabilities (sensing, seizing and transforming) offer a sustainable competitive advantage to an organisation in a changing market environment. However, mixed findings on the association between dynamic capabilities and organisation performance warrant further research. The first is the unclear conditions and the mechanisms under which dynamic capabilities affect organisational performance. Secondly, a detailed analysis of the high-level dynamic capabilities is required to establish the dynamic capabilities with the most effect on an organisation's sustainable competitive advantage.