A relational view of how social capital contributes to effective digital transformation outcomes

Abstract

The specifics of why and how network relationships influence digital transformations have not yet been fully understood. We address this gap by drawing on the relational view of organisations to conceptualise network relationships as the source of requisite external non-generic complementarities for the development of dynamic capabilities (absorptive capacity, integration effort and big data analytics) essential for effective digital transformation outcomes. We follow a positivist research design to test the proposed hypotheses by collecting survey responses from informants from 183 Australian healthcare organisations. The statistical findings indicate that social capital affects the digital transformation outcomes through full individual mediations of absorptive capacity (0.13*), integration effort (0.13*) and big data analytics capability (0.05*) and a full serial mediation (0.01*). This empirical evidence provides two significant advancements to both theory and practice: a) by linking development of dynamic capabilities required for digital transformations to external non-generic complementarities embedded in network relationships; and b) by delineating specific pathways through which the dynamic capabilities of absorptive capacity, integration effort and big data analytics influence digital transformation outcomes.