Adaptive Change in the Digitalization of Manufacturing Enterprises:A Dual-Path Model of Leapfrogging and Foundation-Strengthening
Amid the rapid development of the global digital economy,digital transformation is accelerating,and digital technology innovation and application have become crucial opportunities for national competitiveness.For Chinese manufacturing enterprises,it is a response to global technological trends and a critical strategy to tackle green decarbonization,market uncertainties,and complex international challenges.Compared to developed countries,China's path and approach to industrialization,informatization,and digitalization exhibit significant differences,which shape the unique characteristics of digital transformation of Chinese manufacturing enterprises.Exploring how these differences influence adaptive change actions and path choices in digital transformation is not only essential to summarize practical insights from Chinese manufacturing enterprises but also essential to explore and formulate theoretical understandings of adaptive change.Unlike developed countries,China's compressed development requires enterprises to pursue rapid transformation while avoiding risks of over-acceleration and weak foundations.Enterprises must balance swift strategic and technological innovations with continuous organizational and process improvement,forming a hybrid transformation model.This model cannot be well-explained by the radical or incremental change paradigms in strategic management,as Chinese enterprises operate in a complex context of accelerated industrialization,ongoing market reforms,and synchronized informatization,requiring dynamic multi-domain coordination.Traditional radical and incremental change is typically discussed in general context,failing to capture the multidimensional characteristics and adaptive practices of transformation under these conditions.Hence,grounded in substitution and complementarity mechanisms of digital technology,this paper proposes a theoretical model for adaptive change in digitalization based on a dual-path framework of leapfrogging and foundation-strengthening,using acceleration and coordination as distinguishing criteria.Then it is empirically tested using 498 surveys from manufacturing enterprises.Methodologically,this paper employs structural equation modeling(SEM)to demonstrate the coexistence of leapfrogging and foundation-strengthening transformation paths,and then explores the influencing factors and adaptive change patterns along the value chain in dual-path digital transformation.The main conclusions are as follows.Adaptive change is central to digital transformation.Organizational learning underpins it,with leapfrogging and foundation-strengthening as core pathways.Enterprise innovation culture and industry knowledge intensity are critical conditions,with enterprise innovation culture positively moderating both paths and industry knowledge intensity positively moderating the foundation-strengthening path,indicating that industries with high knowledge intensity require the foundation-strengthening path for transformation.Across the value chain,R&D transformation follows a dual-path model with a primary focus on leapfrogging and a secondary emphasis on foundation-strengthening,while operations,marketing,and functional transformations primarily focus on foundation-strengthening with a secondary emphasis on leapfrogging.It indicates that enterprises must choose different path combinations based on the characteristics of each value chain segment to achieve optimal transformation outcomes.These results underscore the importance of balancing leapfrogging and foundation-strengthening in China's digital transformation.Manufacturing enterprises must allocate resources to harmonize industrialization and digitalization,aligning pathway choices with value chain characteristics for optimal results.In conclusion,this dual-path model transcends the traditional dichotomy of radical versus incremental change,offering a nuanced framework for understanding China's adaptive change practices.Examining influencing factors and value chain strategies,this paper provides actionable insights and enriches adaptive change research in the digital era.
digital transformation of enterprisesadaptive changeleapforgging transformationfoundation-strengthening transformation
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