Chief Digital Officer and Organizational Creativity Toward Digitalization

Abstract

Through the microfoundation lens, this article explores how dynamic capabilities (DCs) of Chief Digital Officers (CDOs) trigger digitalization and organizational creativity of 2124 small to medium enterprises (SMEs) across 39 different European countries. As a result, the significant DCs are substantive and adaptive capabilities, which are offering new solutions, seizing new opportunities, and coping with changes. Besides, those two DCs also assume a mediator role in triggering organizational creativity within SMEs. In terms of theoretical and managerial implications, threefold contributions are provided: the first one offers a fresh study on the digital transformation context of SMEs through a microfoundation perspective; the second emphasizes the crucial role of CDOs as supported and remarked upon previous studies; and, then, the third one stresses out the importance of the individual leverage to generate creativity by the moderating role of DCs. By highlighting the originality of the research, since CDOs are seen to be the spark of unique ideas and innovations in the organization, further insights are proposed to position the need for conceptualizing new paths for developing technologies toward organizational creativity and humanity.

The role of digital knowledge servitization in supply chain management

“…However, the digital servitization process is highly complex, and most manufacturers lag in their digital aspirations (Sj€ odin et al, 2020;Kohtam€ aki et al, 2019). On the other hand, companies that move towards digital servitization struggle with the business model complexities that digital servitization creates; such complexities include conflicts between digital and physical service offerings, seizing new opportunities and handling with clashes between new ecosystem partnerships and traditional supply chain relationships and specific knowledge management competencies in terms of business organization, understanding and fulfillment of customers' needs (Chen et al, 2021;Scuotto et al, 2022). In this scenario, it is possible to highlight companies, such as Volvo, that are rapidly moving to find more autonomous solutions in digital servitization (Parida et al, 2014;Kohtam€ aki et al, 2019;Porter and Heppelmann, 2014), but the role of knowledge in the digital servitization of inbound and outbound supply chains is still under-investigated.…”

“…On the other hand, companies that move towards digital servitization struggle with the business model complexities that digital servitization creates; such complexities include conflicts between digital and physical service offerings, seizing new opportunities and handling with clashes between new ecosystem partnerships and traditional supply chain relationships and specific knowledge management competencies in terms of business organization, understanding and fulfillment of customers' needs (Chen et al. , 2021; Scuotto et al ., 2022). In this scenario, it is possible to highlight companies, such as Volvo, that are rapidly moving to find more autonomous solutions in digital servitization (Parida et al.…”

Do Generative Leadership and Digital Literacy of Executive Management Help Flourishing Micro and Small Business Digital Maturity?

“…Leaders driving DT should be facilitators and communicators (Gilli et al, 2022;Magesa & Jonathan, 2021;Schiuma et al, 2021), creative and visionary (Gilli et al, 2022;Zhu, 2015), knowledge-oriented (Klein, 2020), collaborative (Gilli et al, 2022;Promsri, 2019), enthusiastic and motivator (Magesa & Jonathan, 2021) and should organize the change and increase the awareness related to the benefits of DT practices (Cichosz et al, 2020). Besides, innovativeness resulting in knowledge creation increased market accessibility, and new products/services are considered the most critical component of digital development (Magesa & Jonathan, 2021;Scuotto et al, 2022).…”

“…Thus, it indicates a total change and paradigm shift associated with strategy, vision, leadership, digital awareness and capabilities, and perceiving and capturing opportunities. Previously, it was reported that digital transformation provides competitiveness, increase in sales and revenue (Matt et al, 2015), supply chain efficiency (Accenture, 2017), cost reduction (Verhoef et al, 2021), better or improved productivity (Silva, 2017), and innovativeness and growth (Scuotto et al, 2022) for business enterprises. With Covid-19 uncertainties and disruptions in all business functions, it has become a survival issue for obvious reasons.…”

“…This issue has been discussed as digital leadership characteristics in some studies, while some have discussed the qualities a leader should have. These qualities are stated as innovativeness (Scuotto et al, 2022), being employee-oriented (Bolte et al, 2018), cooperative, collaborative (Promsri, 2019), communicative (Cichosz et al, 2020), facilitator (Gilli et al, 2022), willingness for life-long learning (Kaivo-oja et al, 2016), creative (Zhu, 2015), knowledge-oriented (Magesa & Jonathan, 2021), and motivator (Magesa & Jonathan, 2021). In this context, these qualifications that the literature draws attention to can be matched with generative leadership, one of the leadership types of Klimek et al (2008).…”