Abstract
How do small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) perceive the prerequisites and critical factors of digitalization? The objective of this article is to map SMEs' digital maturity and their views on how to manage the opportunities and challenges brought about by digitalization in order to foster competitiveness in local, regional, national, and international contexts. The study draws on a resource-based perspective, which views the firm as a unique bundle of assets and resources that, if utilized in distinctive ways, can create competitive advantage. The study builds on triadic relations as an interactive learning process that occurs in the interaction between actors as the concept of open innovation postulates. This study was conducted as an interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) study of SMEs and actors in innovation system in Gävleborg County in Sweden. It uses a qualitative approach featuring in-depth interviews, workshops, and focus-group interviews. The findings suggest a digital divide between SMEs, with a discrepancy in opportunities to benefit from the digitalization potential among the population studied. The divide manifests itself through economics, usability, and empowerment. Digitalization should not be viewed as merely a technology issue, but as a better way to run a business, as a platform for development and dissemination of knowledge about the critical factors for increased competitiveness that creates competitive values in production with digitalization as a starting point and creates an understanding of the how and what creates competitiveness in each critical factor.
Highlights
Since the publication of Alfred Chandler’s Strategy and Structure (1962), The Visible Hand (1977) and Scale and Scope (1990), researchers of business policy and organizations have claimed that a firm’s strategy, structure, and managerial processes must ‘fit’ with one another (Teece, 1993)
The findings suggest a digital divide between small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), with a discrepancy in opportunities to benefit from the digitalization potential among the population studied
The exploratory nature of this study is guided by the following research question: How do small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) perceive the prerequisites and critical factors of digitalization? this paper aims to map the digital maturity of SMEs and their views on how to manage the opportunities and challenges brought about by digitalization, in order to foster competitiveness in local, regional, national and international contexts
Summary
Since the publication of Alfred Chandler’s Strategy and Structure (1962), The Visible Hand (1977) and Scale and Scope (1990), researchers of business policy and organizations have claimed that a firm’s strategy, structure, and managerial processes must ‘fit’ with one another (Teece, 1993). They have accentuated the difficulties in achieving this fit and, in particular, the problems of changing an organization’s design and processes to fit new environments or strategies. We release a tremendous amount of data (Ivang et al, 2009; Hagberg et al, 2016). Many are of the opinion that it offers us a chance to put a stop to our current carbon-based civilization and reset to a renewable and sustainable society
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