the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
| 11 Sep 2025
Understanding organisational culture and digitalisation in the wind energy sector
Abstract. Digitalisation is a key enabler for accelerating global wind energy deployment; however, digital technologies can create tension between old values and new ones, making so-called "digital organisational culture" a prerequisite for the success of these technologies. This work aims to understand how organisational culture is related with digitalisation by organisations in the wind energy sector. To answer this question, a literature review was first performed to gain an overview of organisational culture and digitalisation of wind energy. Then the literature review was complemented by an online survey, conducted between March and September 2024. The online survey was addressed to stakeholders from the wind energy sector from 17 countries. The results show that teams, rather than whole organisations, are the stronger engines of digitalisation culture, and companies outperform universities and research and technology organisations. Size has little bearing on cultural readiness, and digital momentum rises bottom-up while large organisations lag in funding and tools. Large organisations supply more formal training, small ones give better support to unsure staff, and team culture depends more on its leaders and members than on hierarchy or number of employees. Qualitative comments identify the main barriers to digitalisation to be lack of resources, vague strategies, siloed structures, risk-averse leaders, and weak digital skills. Suggested solutions include earmarking time and money, creating explicit strategies, improving communication and leadership, rewarding innovation, and investing in targeted training or specialist hires. Finally, a list of recommendations and implementation suggestions are presented, intended to help team leaders and relevant decision-makers in fostering digitalisation.
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- AC1: 'Comment on wes-2025-159', Sarah Barber, 07 Oct 2025 reply
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RC1: 'Comment on wes-2025-159', Anonymous Referee #1, 21 Oct 2025
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General Comments
Thank you for this opportunity to review this preprint for Wind Energy Science. I found the article to be well-written and easy to follow, with strong data visualizations and actionable recommendations. The survey seems to have been thoughtfully developed by researchers with a deep knowledge of organizational culture, and the results were explained deftly, largely sidestepping some possible confusion related to how the different multi-level findings related to each other. The results are nicely translated into broader findings and recommendations that I imagine could be quite useful for those leading organizations and companies within the wind industry. I think the paper could be made stronger in certain areas, such as the literature / theoretical background and motivation, which I will discuss in the next section. In terms of technical quality, I think the paper could be published with very little modification, but I have some questions related to how the topic is framed (both in the text and in the survey design) and how claims are made about the meaning of the results. Note that though I do have a number of comments and questions, I would consider them most of them to be minor in nature.
Specific Comments
1. The paper could benefit from a more fleshed-out theory/background section that more fully motivates the reason for pursuing this research. It should be assumed that the reader is unfamiliar with the benefits and particularities of digitalization; though this is obviously a wind energy journal, I think the paper could have broader appeal to readers from other sectors if it also briefly touched on some of the particularities of the wind industry (e.g., trends, challenges, what types of activities wind companies do). It is not enough, in my opinion, to state that digitalization is a trend in the wind industry; I would have liked to see tangible examples of how it's being used in the wind industry and explanations of why key outcomes in this industry specifically are dependent on it. The reference to the wind industry's "extreme siloed attitudes" is an example of what helps to situate this research in this specific industry. As someone who is not very familiar with digitalization but who cares about outcomes in the wind industry, it was difficult to understand why I should care about these findings; for someone who isn't familiar with either, I imagine it would be even more difficult. Further justification is needed.
2. The methodology should include an explanation of how the open-ended responses were analyzed. The disclaimer on page 25 notes that ChatGPT was used to analyze these qualitative results, but this (as well as other aspects of the analysis) should be introduced in the text of the paper as well. There are many established software programs used to do thematic coding and analysis of qualitative data; as far as I'm aware ChatGPT is not one of them. So I would also acknowledge that this was an experimental approach and perhaps cite literature of other papers that have experimented with using ChatGPT for this purpose. Finally, I would be interested in knowing whether the number of respondents was the same for the open-ended questions; in other words, were respondents required to answer these questions in order to complete the survey, or could they skip them? We know that open-ended questions generally have a lower response rate in survey research, so I would just note the n for these questions somewhere.
3. I think it is important to know what aspects of digitalization this study is interested in and which aspects respondents were primed to think about through the survey design. From following the link to the survey, it seems like the description was fairly vague and broad. Some aspects of digitalization are much more established/commonplace and non-controversial than others; for example, I know that I would respond very differently to these questions if I was asked about remote work and virtual meetings than I would if I was asked about generative AI. This is just something to consider; it could be addressed through a caveat in the methodology or discussion stating that digitalization is a broad term, encompassing a variety of topics that people might have differing feelings about, and respondents were not prompted to think about a specific aspect of it.Â
4. This paper seemingly takes the position that digitalization is important and should be pursued by organizations in the wind industry. However, we do not know to what degree the survey respondents value digitalization; it is somewhat assumed through the survey design that they do, which leads to certain conclusions and interpretations of the data. For example, with the finding that respondents didn't feel that their organizations/teams are prioritizing "Support for uncertain staff members in fostering digitalisation" -- one way to interpret this is that organizations/teams need to be doing more to support staff in this way. Another way to interpret it is that respondents don't care very much about their coworkers "catching up" on digitalization, perhaps because the respondents themselves don't care very much about digitalization -- at least not to the extent of thinking uncertain/reluctant people need to be pushed to catch up. This might differ between organization types as well, as I could see employees of universities caring less about digitalization than employees of wind companies. Because it seems that the survey did not ask respondents how much they care about digitalization, it should not be assumed that they do, and their responses should not be interpreted through this lens.
5. Relatedly, I find the "support for uncertain staff" to be a very interesting piece of this study, because it makes me think about the reasons employees might resist leaning into digitalization. Are these staff members uncertain about digitalization, or are they certain they are not interested in it? What reasons might they have for feeling this way, and are they legitimate? Is there room for dissent within organizations and within an industry? People might form an informed opinion that they are not interested in pursuing certain technologies and innovations within their work at this time, which I would not label as uncertainty. Maybe reluctance or abstention. Just something to consider.
6. In a few places (e.g., line 145, line 270, table 3), a claim is made that teams are better at implementing/supporting digitalization than organizations. I would argue that this interpretation could be going beyond what the data shows. Respondents might feel that the organization-level is where such changes should be made, not the team-level, and thus their responses might just reflect that they have different expectations for these different levels of their institution. When you look at figure 7, one way of interpreting it is respondents want their organizations to do better on digitalization strategies and budgets more than they want their teams to do this, so that must mean their teams are already doing this well; another way of interpreting it is they think this is something their organizations should be working on, not their teams. I would rephrase this claim to be more that employees want their organizations to be taking action on digitalization more than their teams (if they want anyone to do so), rather than stating that teams are doing a better job than organizations.
7. Section 5.2 discussing what you find about bidirectionality is interesting, but I would have liked to see this relationship discussed in the interpretation and depicted in some way in the results graphs. I think it is an important finding that you find relationships between organizational culture and digitalization -- this was set up as important in the introduction, but it is not really discussed again until section 5.2. Though, I would caution against observing a causal relationship from this study; some of the language in 5.2 borders on suggesting causality/influence. One way to make these relationships more present in the results and interpretation sections would be to clearly define which aspects from Table 1 are considered part of organizational culture and which aspects are considered related to digitalization, so that way it would be easier to discuss how these different aspects "moved together" in the results.
8. I can understand separating results from interpretation if it is the preference of the journal, but I find other journals often have one combined results and interpretation section. I would prefer that organization if possible here, as flipping back and forth between the interpretation and the results section became tiresome.Â
9. I would move the first limitation earlier in the paper (or repeat it in multiple places). I was questioning the sample size and its statistical validity while reading the paper, and I could have put those concerns to rest earlier if it was stated in the methodology.
10. I found Figure 2 difficult to understand, as it seemed to be accomplishing quite a lot in one graph. I think separating the results into multiple graphs as was done for the following figures would be valuable.
11. What does it mean that the survey was aimed at employers in addition to employees (line 61)? If employees at different levels of the organizations were targeted / responded to the survey (e.g., middle managers, leadership, normal employees), that would be helpful information to add.
12. In Figure 8, it would be helpful to add labels stating that gray boxes are solutions and white/black boxes are problems/challenges; I know this was said in the text, but it could be added to the figure as well. Also in Figure 8, it is unclear how the solutions pair with the problems; I would have assumed the solutions align with the problem directly above them, but under organizations, for example, there are multiple problems stacked on top of each other. Making these relationships more clear would be valuable.
13. Including universities and RTOs in this study is interesting to me, as it is framed as a study of the wind sector, yet most universities do not focus only on wind energy. Obviously, employees of universities can be considered members of the wind sector if that's what they focus on, but should their employers/institutions be considered part of the wind industry? If so, the same universities are also part of the pharmaceutical industry, the automobile industry, the music industry, and so on. It might be worth noting that the universities and RTOs in this study are supporting / involved in myriad sectors/industries, some of which might be less interested in digitalization than the wind industry is.
14. In the last row of Table 3 (on page 23), another recommendation might be adjusting the metrics used for performance evaluations.
15. Adding a link to the survey is valuable. For readers' accessibility -- and in case the online survey is ever taken down or altered -- I would suggest also adding the full survey as an appendix to this paper.
16. Generally doing more to situate the paper in the context of the wind industry/sector would be valuable; this applies not only to the introduction but also the discussion. It feels as though the paper could be about any industry and just happens to be based on a survey of wind employees. Future research comparing these findings to findings from other industries (such as a survey of employees of multiple sectors) could be very interesting and help to further elucidate why there are specific concerns for the wind industry related to digitalization.Â
17. I don't know very much about theories of organizational/institutional change so apologies if this suggestion is not helpful, but I wonder if any theories of behavior change would be relevant to consider or cite here? For example, some of the recommendations in Table 3 seem more related to the behavior of individuals than to the actions of institutions, so I think it could be valuable to consider behavior change theories and concepts like norms, as well as theories coming from the study of consumer adoption of technologies and society-technology studies. If you want to get individual employees to care more about digitalization and actions that could be taken to advance it, understanding the attitudes and behaviors of individuals is likely relevant in addition to organizational elements.Â
18. In Table 3, the first two findings seem to be in conflict, in my view. How is it simultaneously true that teams foster digital-readiness better than organizations, but there is limited budget and support for bottom-up digitalization efforts? If not in conflict, how do these findings exist in relation to each other? If the takeaway is that organizations are relying on bottom-up efforts to drive change but not funding/supporting them, maybe that supports the idea that organizations don't care very much about digitalization...
19. Relatedly, the limited recognition of digitalization as a key organizational goal (line 228) is interesting; it goes back to my question about how much respondents themselves care about digitalization. Do they think it's a problem that their orgs aren't pushing for it?
20. Though I know the survey language states that respondents were supposed to consider the culture elements in relation to digitalization (for question 2.2), I do wonder if respondents might have only considered the broader culture for their organization and team for each of those questions. Same for question 2.4, where the question doesn't remind them to focus on digitalization. It is somewhat unclear throughout the paper if the culture aspects (like collaborative culture, for example) are standalone items of organizational culture being considered alongside and in comparison to the digitalization aspects, or if these are all considered part of what encourages movement toward digitalization. Maybe good to add clarity on this.
Technical Corrections
1. Define SME (line 4)
2. Define IEA (line 50); it is defined later but not the first time it is used.
3. A phrase used several times -- "rankings of needed support" -- in lines 94-95 and line 142 could be revised for clarity. Using more of the full phrase from elsewhere in the text -- i.e., "rankings of aspects of organizational culture in need of support" would be more clear.Â
4. The sentence on lines 331-332 was difficult to follow; possibly needs to be re-written for clarity.
5. In the final row of Table 3, there is a typo -- "more" is repeated unnecessarily.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-2025-159-RC1
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Please note that we have noticed a mistake in the pre-print, which will be corrected in the final version. One of the aspect of organisational culture in Table 1 was accidently duplicated, meaning that throughout the paper we refer to "15 aspects of organisational culture", whereas there are actually only 14 aspects. This has no influence on the rest of the paper.