Digital transformation and knowledge-based process management in public services: barriers, enablers and sociotechnical dynamics

Resumen

Governments invest continuously in digital transformation, yet a large share of initiatives fails to convert technological capacity into administrative capacity. The literature has established that the obstacles are seldom technical, but it has not specified the organisational mechanism through which the conversion happens or fails. The gap is theoretical and explanatory rather than merely empirical. The article asks how barriers, enablers and sociotechnical dynamics condition digital transformation when the phenomenon is examined through knowledge-based process management. An integrative review was conducted following the five stages of Whittemore and Knafl (2005), with three cycles of thematic coding over studies on digital transformation, process management, knowledge management and public sector modernisation. The findings organise barriers and enablers into five symmetrical domains and identify four recurrent dynamics: decoupling between strategy and enacted process, digitisation of the procedural legacy, erosion of tacit knowledge under automation, and asymmetry between technical and institutional integration. The theoretical contribution lies in defining knowledge-based process management as a three-dimensional construct, comprising explicitation, knowledge integration and revisability, and in showing that it operates as a translation mechanism between the technological and the institutional layers of public administration. Five propositions formalise the mechanism and account for why dynamic capabilities produce uneven effects on performance in government. As an implication, the effectiveness of digital transformation depends on the sequence in which irreversible commitments are made rather than on the sophistication of the technologies adopted.