title: Adoption Model for Digital Technologies: Case Study of Petroleum Development Oman
Creators: name: Al-Rashdi, Abdullah
Publisher: name: University of Liverpool Repository
Year: 2022

description: As Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) embarked in using digital technologies to address operational challenges, it was ill prepared regarding the approach the company needs to take. This thesis proposes an adoption model that PDO can use to adopt digital technologies. During the process of problem analysis, three research objectives were identified. These are; understand digital adoption, investigate factors influencing digital adoption and developing a model for digital adoption. In order to address these research objectives using action research over several cycles, mixed methods were utilised. The research was conducted over a period of almost one year from April 2020 to Jan 2021. The research contributed to identifying two main actions for PDO. PDO embarked in the implementation of a PDO wide digital strategy and kick started the talent development program as a result of this research. The literature review identified key areas to investigate in order to develop an adoption model for digital technologies. These include identifying the digital drivers, the organizational readiness, the required capabilities, leadership and change. As a result of the literature review, the theoretical framework was based on those five pillars. These formed the five research stages of this action research, including debriefing sessions with PDO management after each stage to ensure continuous alignment. The population sample included all staff involved in contributing to the experimentation of digital pilots within PDO. A digital adoption model for PDO emerged with seven key pillars: digital strategy and vision (focusing on building a coherent digital strategy for PDO), digital leadership (focusing in building the required skills for PDO leadership), digital talent development (focusing on skilling PDO resources to implement digital projects), digital capabilities (focusing on key business capabilities to drive digital), business model innovation (focusing in creating a digital mindset to drive future business development), digital governance (focusing on building faster decision making capabilities), and digital change management (focusing on managing the transition to a higher digital maturity). The proposed adoption model was partially implemented by PDO through the development of PDO-wide digital strategy and developing the digital skills within. Finally, the research identified the potential to generalize the model to other organizations and identified key limitations. The limitation includes the use of a particular population sample, conducting the study during COVID19 pandemic and the use of descriptive analysis to analyse the results. This study provided empirical evidence supporting the drivers to adopt digital technologies In addition, the survey developed to measure the digital capabilities provided empirical insights into the digital capabilities needed for organizations planning to adopt digital technologies. Finally, the study outcome was an adoption model (based on evidence collected during this action research).that could guide organizations embarking on similar journey to adopt digital technologies .