How do digital and IT units interact, and what causes them to collaborate or conflict?

Host: Hello and welcome to A.I.S. Insights — powered by Living Knowledge. I am your host, Anna Ivy Summers, and today we are untangling one of the most persistent puzzles in modern business: the often turbulent relationship between traditional IT and the new wave of digital innovation units. Joining me is our resident expert, Alex Ian Sutherland. Welcome, Alex.

Expert: Thanks, Anna. It is great to be here.

Host: Today we are diving into an eye-opening study titled "Beyond Digital vs. IT: The Untold Story of Their Relationship from an Organizing Logic Perspective." At its core, the study explores how digital and IT units actually coexist and interact within organizations undergoing digital transformation, rather than just viewing them as rival factions. Alex, why is this dynamic such a persistent headache for business leaders?

Expert: For years, the prevailing wisdom in business has treated Digital and IT like oil and water. Traditional IT is seen as the guardian of stability, cost efficiency, and legacy infrastructure. Meanwhile, Digital is celebrated as fast, agile, customer-centric, and disruptive. Many companies set up separate digital units specifically to escape what they saw as the slow bureaucracy of IT. But that created a massive blind spot. In reality, you cannot build customer-facing digital apps without the core data, security, and infrastructure that IT maintains. By constantly treating them as opposites, organizations have struggled with bitter turf wars, redundant systems, and stalled transformations without really understanding why.

Host: Exactly. You end up with two camps fighting over budget and control instead of driving growth together. So, how did the authors of this study investigate what is actually going on beneath the surface?

Expert: The researchers took a deep, ethnographic approach across three different organizations over an extended period. Instead of just sending out high-level surveys, they immersed themselves in the daily reality of these companies. They observed cross-functional meetings, tracked architectural decisions, and analyzed how teams worked day to day. To make sense of it all, they applied an organizing logic framework. That means they analyzed how each unit's strategic goals, daily work routines, and technology choices either reinforced each other or clashed.

Host: That brings a much more grounded perspective. And what did the study uncover about how these units actually connect?

Expert: The study revealed that instead of just being separate, IT and Digital are tied together through three primary relationships: interdepending, interlocking, and interfacing. Furthermore, each of these relationships can manifest as either compatible or incompatible dynamics depending on whether the units' needs and operating logics align.

Host: Let's break those down. What does interdepending look like in practice?

Expert: Interdepending is all about mutual reliance. Digital needs IT for stable back-end architectures, and IT needs Digital to deliver modern business value. When their goals align, you get a synergistic dynamic. They leverage each other's strengths to launch products that are both innovative and scalable. But when their underlying rationales clash—say, IT prioritizes strict risk avoidance while Digital prioritizes rapid release cycles—that interdependence turns into a conflicting dynamic, resulting in finger-pointing, delays, and political gridlock.

Host: That makes total sense. What about the second one—interlocking?

Expert: Interlocking refers to how their processes, tools, and governance structures physically fit together. When it works well, you see a converging dynamic. The teams establish shared standards, harmonize their development methodologies, and seamlessly blend agile practices with legacy maintenance. But when they fail to align, you get a diverging dynamic. Digital teams might start buying shadow software-as-a-service tools to bypass IT, while IT builds rigid compliance gates that stop Digital in its tracks. They pull in opposite directions.

Host: And the third relationship: interfacing?

Expert: Interfacing is about the communication channels and boundaries between them. When teams create transparent, shared touchpoints, they achieve an intersecting dynamic where information flows smoothly, handoffs are clear, and empathy develops across teams. The incompatible side of this is a parallel dynamic. In a parallel dynamic, the two units operate in complete isolation. They exist under the same roof, but they barely talk, leading to duplicate work, mismatched data schemas, and missed opportunities.

Host: The study puts all of this into a comprehensive relational model. Why does this model matter so much for executives, CTOs, and digital leaders right now?

Expert: Because the real world is not an either-or choice. A company might have great converging tools, but severe conflicting priorities at the strategic level. This study provides a diagnostic blueprint for leaders. Instead of assuming that creating a separate digital team will magically solve innovation challenges, executives must actively manage the relational connective tissue between Digital and IT. You cannot simply demand collaboration; you have to design alignment across strategic priorities, everyday routines, and the underlying technology stack.

Host: So it turns digital transformation from an ideological battle into an architectural and organizational design challenge.

Expert: Precisely. Successful transformation is not about declaring Digital the winner over legacy IT. It is about orchestrating these three relationships so they produce synergistic, converging, and intersecting outcomes across the enterprise.

Host: That is an invaluable takeaway for anyone leading technology initiatives today. Alex, thank you for breaking down this important study so clearly.

Expert: My pleasure, Anna.

Host: And thank you to our listeners for tuning in to A.I.S. Insights — powered by Living Knowledge. Join us next time as we continue to unpack the research shaping tomorrow's business world. Until then, take care.