This paper addresses the ‘digital imperative’ and how organisations are pressured to digitalise. In comparison to previous studies that often emphasise market pressures to digitalise, this paper focuses on institutional pressures exerted on organisations that lack competitive pressures. By drawing upon institutional theory, which considers the social embeddedness of organisations, it acknowledges that social expectations and approval can shape the way organisations respond to technological change. Based on a study of digitalisation within the water sector, where the perceived benefits of digital technologies are advocated under the label of ‘digital water’, it shows that there are isomorphic processes in place through which the idea of digital water is legitimised. Hence, water utilities are under institutional pressures to digitalise which, in turn, can influence how they respond to digitalisation.

Decaying water infrastructure is a growing challenge in high-income countries while at the same time being under pressure from other socioeconomic and environmental issues. This paper analyses why addressing these challenges is so challenging, despite the critical role of water service for society. The paper is based on a study of the Swedish water sector and reveals how the utilities are influenced by several factors that constrain their agency. Most importantly, the utilities operate in a ‘societal shadowland’ where the public and politicians take their services for granted, lowering the sense of urgency and impeding their ability to take action.

The water sector of Europe and North America, which provide drinking water and wastewater services to the society, today face a number of significant challenges that are pressuring the existing systems and challenging the current status-quo. With the emergence of new technologies, opportunities for new ways of managing and maintaining these infrastructural systems are enabled. At the same time, many infrastructural systems are difficult to change due to path dependencies, technological lock-ins, and conservative regimes and system cultures (David, 1992; Hughes, 1983; 1992; Kaijser, 2003). This especially applies to the water sector in the global North, which has developed over a very long period of time and consists of a large number of incumbent organisations, which taken together creates significant barriers towards innovation and change.

Transition theory postulates that pressure from the socio-technical landscape, internal momentum from niche-innovations, and growing destabilisation of the regime enhance a window of opportunity (w/o) for a possible transition (Geels and Schot, 2007). However, despite a sector functioning under a well-established “global water regime” (Fuenfschilling and Binz, 2018), the operations of water utilities are in practice situated in different local conditions, creating significantly different window of opportunity dynamics (Tongur and Engwall, 2017). Hence, from a public policy point of view, water and wastewater service provision cannot be treated as a coherent regime of national or global scale but must consider local geophysical and socio-political conditions.

This paper sets out to identify challenges - or innovation pressures - faced by water utilities in the stabilised European regime setting and to outline how these challenges differ depending on local geophysical and socio-political conditions. Our paper is based on a study of the water sector in Sweden, known for its well-functioning societal infrastructures and stable public institutions. Based on the empirical findings, we demonstrate that incumbent regime actors of the Swedish water sector mainly perceive pressure from ageing infrastructures and demographical changes, where the rigidness of the current regime is largely influenced by the political governance and current economic system. Furthermore, the findings illustrated how the regime actors’ abilities to respond to pressures were largely influenced by two local conditions on municipal level; (1) population size, and (2) population density. We suggest that emphasising such differences is important to understand where and how the water sector is most agile to change, and what hinders and facilitate that change.

This paper aims to explore digitalisation processes within water utilities, focusing on how these processes differ from those typically observed in the literature. By examining the unique context of water utilities - characterised as high-reliability organisations operating under strict regulatory conditions and managing extensive physical assets - the paper seeks to challenge and expand the prevailing assumptions in the digitalisation literature. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with professionals in the Swedish water sector, the paper illustrates how studies of digitalisation require a contextually anchored approach that goes beyond the focal organisation. Contextual factors not only shape the incentives and possibilities for digitalisation but also influence its very outcomes, which may require us to reconsider what defines a digital transformation. Rather than aiming for a 'one-size-fits-all' understanding of digitalisation, studies are needed from a wide range of empirical contexts that illustrate the complexity and diversity of digitalisation processes. Ultimately, the paper aims to contribute to a broader understanding of digitalisation across diverse organisational settings, particularly those that are underrepresented in current research.

Digitalisation has gained growing interest in the broader water sector, with data-driven solutions seen as key to this development. These technologies are often portrayed as solutions to current and future challenges and potential applications have been identified across all areas of urban water management. However, their implementation in water utilities remains moderate. This paper examines how data-driven solutions align with and address the perceived needs of water utilities. It is based on an interview study with key informants from Swedish water utilities involved in implementing and using data-driven solutions in urban water management. Our findings suggest that these solutions are not yet well-aligned with the technical and organisational structures of utilities. While they can address the long-term needs of water utilities with promises of improved efficiency and performance, they are less equipped to meet short-term needs which call for simple, immediate-impact solutions. Although implementing data-driven solutions should be motivated by actual organisational needs, we must distinguish between the short-term and long-term needs of water utilities. Prioritising short-term needs might be more efficient in the short run but can be detrimental in the long run. This creates what in the innovation literature is referred to as an ‘ambidexterity dilemma’.