<p>Digital transformation (DT) remains conceptually fragmented and operationally inconsistent despite substantial scholarly attention and organizational investment. Existing research often isolates themes such as technology adoption, customer experience, data governance, or business model renewal, limiting the development of a coherent theoretical architecture. This study addresses these gaps by constructing and validating an integrative framework of forty-one strategic imperatives structured across seven dimensions: Competition, Customer, Data, Innovation, Regulation, Technology, and Value. A sequential mixed-method design combines a Semi-Structured Literature Review (SSLR) of 135 articles with expert validation interviews, ensuring both theoretical rigor and practical relevance. The SSLR identifies forty imperatives, while expert insights refine ambiguous constructs, elevate under-represented areas such as regulatory alignment and data governance, and introduce the additional imperative of Embedding Data Ethics. The integrated findings reveal that DT unfolds through interdependent socio-technical and strategic capabilities rather than isolated initiatives. Several imperatives—such as ecosystem orchestration, operational excellence &amp; Differentiation, and digital growth—are strongly supported in the literature, whereas others, including customer obsession, regulatory sandboxing, and ethical governance, emerge as under-theorized yet practically decisive. The resulting framework advances DT scholarship by strengthening conceptual clarity, integrating siloed research domains, and establishing a multidimensional foundation for future theory building. For practitioners, it provides actionable guidance for aligning strategic intent with operational implementation and mitigating the risks associated with fragmented transformation efforts.</p>