Corporate Digital Capability: A Review and Prospects

Hu Yuchen, Hu Yonghao, Li Jie

Foreign Economics & Management Vol. 45, Issue 12, pp. 34 - 51 (2023)  DOI:10.16538/j.cnki.fem.20230131.102

Summary

Digital capability is regarded as the prerequisite and core driving capability of enterprise digital transformation, and it is one of the emerging topics that academia and industry have paid attention to in recent years. However, the development history of digital capability research is relatively short, and there are many problems such as unclear evolution, inconsistent connotation of concepts, unsystematic distribution of results, and unclear development directions. Therefore, this paper firstly presents the overall overview and evolution of digital capability research, refines the connotation of digital capability and identifies it with the concepts of IT capability and big data capability, and analyzes the different dimensions of digital capability. Secondly, it discusses the antecedents and consequences of digital capability and the mechanism of its effects from the environmental, organizational, and individual levels. Finally, taking into account the gaps in the current digital capability research, this paper proposes that the future should deepen the conceptual understanding of digital capability, develop mature measurement scales, expand research contexts, explore different theoretical approaches, and explore the impact mechanism research from different theoretical perspectives. The purpose of this paper is to provide ideas and references for subsequent research on digital capabilities based on Chinese contexts.

Keywords

digital capability; literature review; integration framework; research outlook