The Triple Nexus: Digital Transformation of Manufacturing SMEs as Holistic Organizational Change

Our business world has become increasingly digital over the last decades. While the omnipresent digital technologies are generally unspecific to any firm type, incumbent SMEs are lagging behind big corporations regarding their adoption due to their liability of smallness. Especially manufacturing SMEs struggle to transform digitally because they depart from a comparably challenging starting position with products and services that are analog by their very nature. Accounting for a significant share of the economies in the Global North, incumbent manufacturing SMEs are of crucial relevance for the economic, social, and political wellbeing of these countries. However, holistic research on the digital transformation of SMEs is scarce and heterogeneous. This thesis addresses this gap by investigating ten manufacturing SMEs in Southern Germany through an organizational change lens. Applying an exploratory multiple-case study approach, the empirical data and the extant literature are abductively iterated to build a theory of digital transformation as holistic organizational change. With this research, I contribute a theoretical model consisting of the triple nexus for successful digital transformation: First, the technological nexus places emphasis on deploying digital initiatives in SMEs. Second, the commercial nexus requires establishing business rationales for digital initiatives to serve an economic purpose in the overall context of the company. Third, the human nexus postulates facilitating organizational change to render digital initiatives effective. The findings suggest that a holistic approach that balances the triple nexus enhances the success of the digital transformation of SMEs. Furthermore, I add to the organizational change literature by demonstrating that digital transformation in incumbent manufacturing SMEs is a matter of continuous organizational change. Moreover, I contribute to the management and information systems literature by consolidating the ambiguous body of knowledge with an integrated view on digital transformation. The implication for practice is a translatable theory that complies with rigorous academic standards and simultaneously appeals to SME decision-makers to orchestrate digital transformation. Additionally, I emphasize the necessity to place SMEs in the focus of policymakers. Lastly, the reflexive interpretation methodology permits novel perspectives on a phenomenon that has thus far predominantly been approached with positivistic assumptions. All in all, digital transformation is neither purely about technology nor strategy but about a holistic equilibration of technological, commercial, and human facets.