How Digital Leaders Can Dismantle “Institutional Resistance”

(A review of scholarly findings and practical strategies)

Digital transformation is not just about purchasing tools and deploying software. In many organizations, the biggest barrier to success is the norms, values, and processes that have become entrenched in the organizational culture over years — what management scholars call institutional properties.

Based on a systematic review of 257 scholarly articles (Bauwens & Cortellazzo, 2025), these properties can either enable or block digitization. Relation 5 in the paper’s model explains how leadership can change these properties or align with them. This is where the idea of institutional deinstitutionalization comes in — breaking or phasing out the norms no longer fit for today’s digital reality.

Key Findings from the Paper

• Agile & entrepreneurial leaders are most likely to steer culture and values toward adopting digital technologies (Roblek et al., 2021; Leso et al., 2023).
• C‑level leaders can change the organization’s overall direction through decisions and active role‑modelling, but informal leaders — such as influencers in organizational online communities — also exert a hidden yet substantial influence over norms (Lee et al., 2019).
• Change is not always linear; organizations can host several contradictory institutional logics at once, forcing leaders to balance and compromise (Bunduchi et al., 2020).

Future Research Suggestions (Relation 5)

• Investigate the institutional deinstitutionalization process in digital transformation:
  • Which leadership techniques, language patterns, and acts accelerate the obsolescence of old norms?
  • What factors cause such efforts to fail?

Strategic Response from Solia‑AI

Think of institutional erosion during digital change as dismantling an old bridge while simultaneously constructing a modular bypass: you must signal the way forward, reduce the load on old spans, and assemble new, flexible supports in parallel.

Rapid norm decay happens when coordinated framing, continuous behavioral interventions, and infrastructure changes make legacy practices unattractive or irrelevant. Failures usually stem from mixed signals, misaligned incentives, skill gaps, and legitimacy loss among key stakeholders.

Core issue: Obsolete norms persist because they still carry legitimacy, are embedded in incentives and routines, and are reinforced by legacy technologies and job identities. Neutralizing them requires a consistent narrative, durable procedural changes, and visible, low‑risk adoption pathways for replacements.

Three Practical Paths

1. Reframe & Role‑model:

Senior leaders redefine the old norm as risky or costly, back it up with visible behavior modelling (e.g., publicly stopping practice X), and weave the new narrative into onboarding, training, and performance reviews.

Practical tactic: Publish three narrative frames (risk, cost, opportunity) and require leaders to use one in their weekly communications for 90 days.

2. Operate‑by‑Replacement:

Run short, rapid experiments replacing an old practice with an agile alternative — track “time‑to‑benefit” — then launch a pre‑announced retirement plan for the legacy process. Make the old option harder in step with the scaling of the new (remove licenses, close forms, deactivate old tools).

Practical tactic: Implement a 30–60 day pilot with a Sunset Scoreboard showing where adoption has grown, what costs have been saved, and which parts of the old stream have been eliminated.

3. Realign Incentives & Governance:

Shift KPIs, rewards, and job descriptions so old behaviors are unrewarded and new behaviors confer professional value. Pair this with technical scaffolding (APIs, modular platforms) to make retiring old systems technically easy.

Key Risks & Mitigation

• Risk: Mixed leadership messages (“we want change” while rewarding old behavior).

  • Mitigation: Public, measurable leadership commitments + periodic reward‑system audits.
  • Result: Message–reward alignment.

• Risk: Pushback and legitimacy loss among front‑line staff.

  • Mitigation: Phased transition, safety net (dual‑running both old and new for a limited time), targeted reskilling with clear pathways.
  • Result: Reduced resistance, smoother adoption.

• Risk: Skill gaps — people can’t operate the new way.

  • Mitigation: Micro‑learning, embedded team coaches, task‑based apprenticeships on real projects.
  • Result: Sustained competence, lower operational risk.

• Risk: Symbolism (shallow pilot with no structural change).

  • Mitigation: Tie pilots to governance changes and sunset triggers.
  • Result: Lasting institutional change.

Short‑Term Action (< 1 week)

Run a Norm Audit: 90‑minute cross‑unit session to list the top 3 legacy practices, their real harms, and a quick replacement to trial within 30 days. Publish results and secure leader commitment to pilot.

Long‑Term Action (3–12 months)

Implement a phased sunset plan: set target dates for retiring legacy processes, redesign incentives and job descriptions to reward the new, deploy modular tech replacements, and conduct quarterly legitimacy checks (surveys + adoption metrics) to select the next sunsets.

Measuring Success

• Behavioral adoption: % of teams using the new way.
• Structural change: Number of old licenses retired.
• Perceived legitimacy: % of front‑line staff agreeing the new is better.
• Economic impact: Time/money saved.

Two Analytical Questions

1. Which metrics best detect the early legitimacy loss of obsolete norms?
2. Which stakeholder groups require compensatory transition (job, status, or skills) to avoid blocking the process?

Three Innovative Ideas to Boost Execution

• Leader Storyboard: Public timeline showing leaders’ actions to stop old practices and start new ones, updated weekly to model behavior.
• Legacy Heatmap: Visual matrix plotting practices by legitimacy, cost, and technical rootedness to prioritize sunsets.
• Job‑Credit Swap: Convert credits earned from legacy‑linked achievements into credits for training, promotion eligibility, or project choice — so people don’t lose status when old norms disappear.

Summary: Align language, remove procedural supports for the old, and replace them with rewarded, low‑friction alternatives — while tracking legitimacy and capacity. Like dismantling a bridge while building a detour, keep the flow moving with visible leadership, well‑designed pilots, and phased removal of supports.