According to Accenture's "China Enterprise Digital Transformation Index 2021" report, only 16% of China's leading enterprises have achieved significant results in digital transformation, and the majority of enterprises are still in the early stages of digital transformation. As the main carriers of industrial digital transformation, small and medium-sized private manufacturing enterprises are confronted with greater barriers than large enterprises due to their limited resources of digital technologies and talents. While digital transformation is subject to the interaction of multiple factors, such as system, environment, organization, and technology, and the absence of any key factors or mismatch between the factors may lead to the failure of the transformation. There is relatively little research on digital transformation of small and medium-sized enterprises(SMEs), and from the research methodology, most of the existing literature uses qualitative analysis to discuss the influencing factors and process models of digital transformation of small and medium-sized enterprises, and quantitative research is rare; from the content of the research, most of the existing quantitative studies on digital transformation of SMEs have been conducted from the perspectives of resources and capabilities to analyze the "net effect" of individual factors on the digital transformation of enterprises, paying less attention to factors at other levels (such as industry and system, etc.), and ignoring the coordination and interaction between factors at different levels, which makes it difficult to figure out how SMEs with heterogeneous resources can choose the appropriate path of digital transformation.
Within the "strategy triangle" framework constructed by Peng et al., this study adopts the research method of combining qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) and necessary conditions analysis (NCA) to elucidate the configuration effects of the six conditions of the marketization process, digital policy support, leadership structure, concentration ratio, digital resource infrastructure, and adaptation capacity on the digital transformation of enterprises. Meanwhile, the private manufacturing enterprises listed on China GEM in 2021 are selected as the initial research object, and after eliminating the serious lack of relevant data and ST and *ST enterprises, this paper finally obtains valid data from 653 listed companies.
The study shows that, firstly, there is not any single factor as a necessary condition for SMEs to generate high-maturity digital transformation, which implies that the factors leading to the high-maturity digital transformation of SMEs are multiple and that there is a need to focus on the coordinated interaction between multiple factors. Secondly, two types of configuration paths lead to high-maturity digital transformation in private SMEs, namely, efficient adaptation and resource-capability coordination. Meanwhile, the resource-capability coordination type can be further refined into the resource-capability dominant type, the resource-capability coordination type under the dual assistance of government and market, and the resource-capability coordination type under the dual drive of government and industry. By comparing the four configuration paths of high-maturity digital transformation horizontally, it can be seen that enhancing enterprise adaptation capability plays a universal role in generating high-maturity digital transformation for small and medium-sized private manufacturing enterprises. Finally, the study also identifies four configuration paths that lead to non-high-maturity digital transformation in small and medium-sized private manufacturing enterprises, and through comparison, it is found that all four paths have weak digital resource infrastructure and insufficient adaptation capability, which belong to the "type of resource-capability deficiency".
This study adopts a combination of NCA and fsQCA to explore the complex causal mechanisms of the digital transformation of small and medium-sized private manufacturing enterprises, which enriches the qualitative and quantitative research on the digital transformation of SMEs. Meanwhile, different from previous studies, this paper innovatively constructs a research framework for the digital transformation of small and medium-sized private manufacturing enterprises based on the theory of the "strategic triangle", analyzing how factors at the level of "resource-industry-institution" coordination with each other to produce high-maturity digital transformation from the perspective of configuration. It also identifies a variety of configuration paths leading to high or non-high-maturity digital transformation in small and medium-sized private manufacturing enterprises, which provides a theoretical basis and practical reference for managers of small and medium-sized private manufacturing enterprises to formulate appropriate digital transformation routes rooted in their contexts.