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The digitalisation of healthcare services has proven to be difficult, with numerous negative effects. We argue that the reason for the problem is not poor project management, but a clash of different institutional logics. The aim of this article is to explore, define and theorise the concept of digitalism, as a term for a new institutional logic in contrast to other, more known logics in organisations, such as managerialism and professionalism, to better understand processes of digitalisation.

We illustrate our arguments with a case study of a process of organizational development before and after the implementation of centralised large-scale IT systems at a large Norwegian hospital. Data was extracted from documents and observations from January 2015 to January 2016 during an organizational audit. In addition, a follow-up study was conducted in 2019 and 2024 by interviewing eight key personnel who were involved in the implementation process.

The implementation of a new digital health record in a Norwegian hospital is a process of social restructuring that involves new actors, logics and control systems. The process of digitalisation shows us how digitalism create tensions, diverges and merges with other institutional logics.

Understanding digitalism as a sensitising concept offers insights into how large-scale technology and organizations are tied together and can help to reduce organizational dysfunctionalities and improve the implementation of IT systems.

This study contributes to a new understanding of digitalisation processes and links an ongoing theoretical debate on the digitalisation of organizations with empirical findings.

This paper aims to derive a model that explores how the interplay between knowledge integration capability and innovation impacts strategic orientation, leading to the attainment of sustainable competitive advantage. The study considers the constituents of strategic orientation, namely, customer orientation, competitor orientation and technology orientation, as the basis for achieving sustainable competitive advantage. The study suggests that the firm’s capacity for integrating external and internal knowledge shapes how strategic orientation influences sustainable competitive advantage through service innovation.

This empirical research relies on qualitative and quantitative data gathered from telecom professionals to assess how knowledge integration and service innovation influence sustained competitive advantage. Structured equation modeling is used to examine the model and its interrelationships.

The research establishes significant relationships between strategic orientations, knowledge integration capability, service innovation and sustainable competitive advantage. Knowledge integration capability and service innovation are found to mediate the relationship between strategic orientations and the achievement of sustainable competitive advantage.

The study highlights the significant contribution of a firm’s knowledge integration capability in driving service innovation, especially in technology-intensive service industries facing hypercompetition. It also advocates prioritizing technology orientation and integrating knowledge from internal and external sources for competitive advantage.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to model the effect of knowledge integration capability and service innovation on strategic orientation-led sustainable competitive advantage.