earticle

영어

The rapid development of digital technologies has brought unprecedented impact and challenges to Chinese enterprises. Featured by the internet of things (IoT), cloud computing, big data, mobile, social media, artificial intelligence (AI), and blockchain, digital transformation has become increasingly important for companies to attract and retain customers. Recently, many companies have launched digital or mobile transformation strategies to gain a competitive advantage. According to the 'Digital China Construction Development Report' issued by the China National Network Office, China's digital economy reached 35 trillion yuan in 2019. This amount accounts for 35.5% of China's total GDP. And It is estimated that the digital economy will account for 7%~22% of GDP growth over the next decade. So far, however, empirical studies on what factors are driving companies to adopt digital transformation have been lacking. This paper aims to examine the digital transformation's influencing factors and provide implications for the digital industry's development and digital application improvement. To that end, this paper conducts an empirical study for investigating the influencing factors of digital transformation adoption of Chinese enterprises through the lens of technologyorganization- environment (TOE) framework and the innovation diffusion theory. First, this study selected four variables (complexity, compatibility relative advantage, and trialability) as technology factors. Based on the previous studies, we hypothesized that three variables positively affect DT's adoption except for complexity. Second, this study selected two variables (resource readiness and management support) as organization factors. From the literature review, we hypothesized that two variables positively affect the adoption of DT. Third, this study selected three variables (competitive pressure, governmental support, and bandwagon pressure) as environment factors. Through the past studies, we hypothesized that three variables positively affect the adoption of DT. We surveyed Chinese enterprises. All respondents are above the middle manager level of each company. 320 questionnaires were distributed, and 315 were collected. After discarding invalid questionnaires, 313 were finally used. And this study used the partial least square - structural equation model (PLS-SEM) for the analysis. The empirical results showed that complexity, compatibility, trialability, resource readiness, management support, competitive pressure, and bandwagon pressure are significant factors of Chinese enterprises' digital transformation adoption. This study has enriched the existing digital transformation research by investigating extensive factors from the lens of the technology-organizationenvironment (TOE) framework. As noted earlier, the research gap in how the various factors impact digital transformation adoption in Chinese enterprises has still existed. Therefore, this study contributes to filling the gap in the literature. And this study examined the perceptions of digital transformation in Chinese enterprises empirically. Future research can extend it to a comparative study to analyze digital transformation adoption by enterprises between China and other countries.