Analysis on Driving Mechanism of Chinese Enterprises'Digital M&As:Based on fsQCA Approach
Under the context of digital economy,corporate digital-based characterized by digital technologies has grown rapidly in China.It reshapes corporate cross-border M&As activities and becomes an important engine for acceler-ating digital transformation of traditional enterprises and digital R&D of digital enterprises in emerging economies.How-ever,there are few studies on digital M&As in the context of digital economy currently,and some researches have only explored the net effect of a single factor on firms'digital M&As.While considering the complexity of driving mechanisms of firms'digital M&A in the digital economy context,the factors are often asymmetric and complex,so the driving mecha-nism of digital M&As in Chinese companies cannot be fully revealed from a linear perspective.In this regard,how to con-sider the linkages between multiple complex causes and effects in digital M&As and thus explore the digital M&A activi-ties of Chinese firms has become a focus of both theoretical and practical.In summary,we propose a holistic and sys-tematic model of digital M&As driving mechanism of Chinese enterprises based on an asymmetric configurational perspective,with analyzed with the the main driving mechanism framework of institutional environment,enterprise hetero-geneity and resource seeking.Further,in order to compare and analyze the similarities and differences of firms'digital M&As paths between Chinese traditional enterprises and digital enterprises.We then follow fsQCA procedure and summa-rize five pathways of traditional enterprises'highly effective digital M&As.We have named them into four types of configurational strategies based on core conditions,namely S1(a dominant digital capability-driven strategy),S2(a dominant institutional environment-driven strategy),S3 and S4(a dual institu-tional environment+digital capability-driven strategy),and S5(a strategy spontaneous strategy).The results show that the dual digital institutional environment+digital capability coupling strategy is the successful path of digital M&As for most traditional enterprises.Among them,digital capability is an important factor to be considered,which is consistent with the purpose of traditional enterprises to accelerate digital transformation through digital M&As.Besides,there are also four configurational paths for digital enterprises to achieve high effectiveness in digital M&A,and they are collected into four types of strategies based on core conditions,namely Cl(a dominant digital institutional environment-driven strategy),C2(a dominant digital resource-driven strategy),C3(a dual institutional environment+re-source-driven strategy)and C4(a synergy-driven strategy).The results show that the synergy-driven strategy is the highly effective path for most digital enterprises to achieve digital M&As.Among them,acquiring digital resources in the host country is an important factor to consider,which is in line with the purpose of digital enterprises to accelerate digital tech-nology penetration and occupy digital markets in host country.In addition,it also further compares and analyzes the high-ly effective and low effective configurational paths of digital M&As that affecting traditional and digital firms.Based on this,the marginal contributions of this paper are as follows:Firstly,it re-examines the research of Chinese firms'digital M&As driving factors based on an asymmetric configurational perspective and then constructs a configura-tional driving mechanism model of Chinese firms'digital M&As.It enriches the theoretical study of firms'cross-border M&A in the digital context and also provides some research reference for the combination between fsQCA analysis and digital trade.Secondly,we introduce cases of both digital and traditional enterprises,and further compare and analyze the similarities and differences in digital M&As pathways of different types of enterprises,so as to provide some reference for accelerating the high effectiveness of digital M&As of different types of enterprises.Finally,the findings of this paper also provide some reference for Chinese enterprises to participate in digital trade,and the government to formulate relevant digital trade policies and finally improve the digital institutional environment.
digital M&AsfsQCAtraditional enterprisesdigital enterprises
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