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| The Mechanism of Digital Technology Driving Digital Innovation Performance in Non-Internet Enterprises: The Moderating Effect of Organizational Legitimacy |
| Ye Dan,Yao Meifang,Ge Baoshan,Zhao Liyi |
| (School of Business and Management, Jilin University, Changchun 130015, China) |
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Abstract Digital technology has empowered the overall economy, but there are still many traditional non-Internet enterprises that take conventional production factors as the core driving force. Under the dual influence of global digitalization and COVID-19, enterprises with the organizational development paths relying on non-digitalization are stuck. This paper argues that only by developing information technology capacity and taking digital transformation as well as digital innovation can these enterprises cope with the destructive challenges of digitization and obtain digital dividends. Digital transformation and digital innovation have emerged as emerging research topics in recent years, and most of the existing research focuses on theoretical construction and the exploration of case studies. However, little literature studies the path mechanism of digital transformation and digital innovation, especially since it is still an unexplored research topic for non-IT companies from developing information technology utilization capabilities to obtaining digital innovation performance. Different from Internet companies, many traditional non-Internet firms(non-IT firms in short) mainly rely on follow-up investment to obtain digital resources, but how to effectively use IT resources and obtain digital innovation performance is still a difficult problem for academia and managers in non-Internet firms.#br#Scholars who study technological innovation based on a resource-based view believe that enterprises should take into account social and technological factors in innovation, and excessive bias towards either of the two factors will make enterprises unable to acquire technology. As a result, in order to differentiate themselves from competitors, non-IT firms must effectively match their IT resources and social resources. Existing research has verified the effectiveness of enterprise IT capabilities to localize the development of enterprise information technology resources and improve business process digitization. As a technical factor, IT capability has a certain positive effect on non-IT firms developing IT resources for digital transformation and digital innovation. However, for non-IT firms, a single technical capability cannot ensure that they obtain high digital innovation dividends. The application of digital technologies for digital transformation and digital innovation is undoubtedly a radical organizational change for non-IT firms, and it transcends their traditional organizational action boundaries and brings many challenges such as competitive logic, institutional complexity and legitimacy. The institutional theory believes that any organizational action and operation are subject to social expectations and social identity. Scholars who study the digital transformation of enterprises from the perspective of institutional theory regard the digital transformation of enterprises as the combined effect of several digital innovations, and they believe that these new innovations have brought about changes or substitutions in the organizations and industries. The digital transformation and digital innovation activities of non-IT firms undoubtedly face many legal obstacles, but few studies deeply explore how they can cross the legitimate threshold and obtain digital innovation performance in digitalization, so this paper attempts to open this "black box".#br#By integrating the theories of resource-based view and institutional theory, this study constructs a theoretical model of non-internet firms’ IT capability, digital transformation, organizational legitimacy and digital innovation performance. To verify the theoretical model, it further uses linear regression analysis and Bootstrap analysis with 275 samples from non-IT firms. The results show that IT capability and the application of digital technology in digital transformation have a positive impact on these firms’ digital innovation performance; digital transformation has a mediating effect on the relationship between IT capability and digital innovation performance; and organizational legitimacy further moderates the mediating effect of digital transformation on IT capability and digital innovation performance.#br#The main contribution of this study is integrating the resource-based view and institutional theory to explore how non-Internet enterprises match their technological resources and social resources to obtain digital innovation performance, while existing literature mostly discusses the different influences of enterprise resources on their digital innovation from a single theoretical perspective. Besides, this paper explores the digitalization process of non-IT firms based on their uniqueness, and combines theoretical and empirical methods to explore how these firms solve the dual obstacles of insufficient technology application ability and social recognition of digital transformation and digital innovation.#br#
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Received: 17 December 2021
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