The built environment sector generates 40% of global greenhouse gas emissions and consumes 40% of global energy. Its low efficiency, waste generation, and high demand for natural resources, contributing to climate change. To address these issues, regenerative design principles, net-zero emissions, reduced energy consumption, improved asset performance, and efficient resource utilization must be prioritized. Research provides compelling evidence that transitioning from traditional, non-digital practices to those supported by recent technological innovations can facilitate a response to climate. Building Information Modelling (BIM), blockchain, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things (IoT), and other emerging technologies form the foundations of digital transformation. The widespread adoption of these digital technologies in the built environment presents an opportunity to trigger a paradigm shift, address climate change, and promote net zero policies and regenerative design principles.
Despite these findings, the intended systematic digital transformation and widespread adoption of these technologies have not been realized. This can be attributed, in part, to the challenges and complexities of managing the necessary shift, which requires changes cutting across disciplines, supply chain boundaries, and integrated components of an organization's business. The available scholarly papers and industry sources have provided little insight into planning for these changes. The episode of change for a digital transformation has been largely overlooked in the literature, and almost all available studies fail to offer practical recommendations to help the industry manage change. In essence, current literature focuses on the 'why' of embracing a digital transformation at the expense of 'how.'
This special issue presents a global manifesto dedicated to successful organizational change management for digital transformation, in recognition of the pressing need to address the urgent challenge of climate change. This issue represents a significant step in advancing knowledge on this topic and aims to stimulate broader discussions on the potential to employ change management theories to inform a digital transformation. The objectives of this special issue are to explore adoption policies and procedures; translate change management theories into strategies to enhance organizational capacity; and provide case studies demonstrating successful change management, adoption, and wider implementation.
