Strategic Information Systems research has faced a significant methodological shortcoming in the recent decades. That is, while scholars appreciate the systemic nature of implications of digital technologies on operational and competitive environments, and the two-way relationship between investments in digital technologies and strategic moves, mainstream analytical approaches fail to grasp such systemic and bidirectional relationships. Consequently, cumulative research does not provide comprehensive contextualising and theorising the implications of emerging digital technologies on digital transformation of organizations, markets and industries. Investigating the process of digital transformation in an insurance company through the lenses of the Appreciative Systems Models for over eight years, we believe that the model can serve as the philosophical underpinning to devise new analytical models for investigating strategic information systems in a holistic perspective.

The model starts with two stranded ropes that depict the constant flux of events and ideas in the day-to-day life. Actors perceptions of such events and ideas could lead to interventions, or actions, that are justified through judgments and standers. The key point here is that both appreciations and actions affect not only the future flux of events and ideas, but also standards and values that future appreciations would be judged against. In the contexts of digital transformation, the flux of events and ideas represents technological innovations, disruptions and other emerging factors that shape the operational and competitive environments. Appreciations represent strategic intents that are formed by the managements perceptions and judged by the firms experience in acquiring and levering digital technologies. Actions represent business model reconfigurations in order to execute strategic intents. Using this model to develop a timeline based on each time that the organization undergo a change process, could help scholars, and practitioners alike, better understand emerging strategic intentions against the organizational technological and strategic know-how.