Promote or Inhibit: CEO Career Concerns and Enterprise Digital Transformation

Abstract

The digital transformation of Chinese enterprises is imperative, and digital transformation is a typical long-cycle strategic decision, so it is necessary to analyze the motivation of digital transformation from the perspective of time, especially career. However, there is little research to discuss the impact of key role CEOs on digital transformation based on their career tradeoffs. Therefore, this paper chooses manufacturing enterprises as research samples to study the relationship between CEO career concerns and enterprise digital transformation. This paper finds that there is an inverted U-shaped nonlinear relationship between CEO's career concerns and enterprise digital transformation; Within a certain range, CEO career concerns positively promotes digital transformation, but after a certain threshold, it inhibits digital transformation. This inverted U-shaped relationship is weakened by the increasing power intensity of the CEO and the short-sightedness of management. This paper describes the role of CEO in the digital process from the perspective of career concern, expands the antecedents of digital transformation, and provides some implications for enterprises to promote digital transformation.