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The COVID-19 pandemic, which globally affected all the countries of the world both economically and socially, has become one of the biggest crises after the 1929 world economic depression. During this period, not only people's health but also the economic health of countries was affected. In this process, people have created intense connection traffic on the internet to meet their needs, and this has accelerated the digitalization processes of businesses. Thus, the concept of digital transformation began to be widely used. Today, digital transformation processes have become an external environmental variable that covers all sectors, not businesses in a single sector. This situation has revealed the necessity of creating new business/management strategies that increase customer value for business managers. Digital transformation has shown itself in all business functions. In other words, the demands and priorities of each function and its managers have also changed. Therefore, business and department managers are required that they perceive digital transformation processes correctly and integrate their businesses/departments into this process with the right business/management strategies, without conflicting with the digital transformation processes. In this study, various ideas and evaluations put forward about sustainable business/management strategies that can be applied against the current and future importance of the digitalization/digital transformation process and its possible effects on businesses are included.

This study aims to focus on a key unanswered question about how digitalization and the knowledge processes it enables affect firms’ strategies in the international arena.

The authors conduct a systematic literature review of relevant theoretical and empirical studies covering over 20 years of research (from 2000 to 2023) and including 73 journal papers.

This review allows us to highlight a relationship between firms’ international strategies and the knowledge processes enabled by applying digital technologies. Specifically, the authors discuss the characteristics of patterns of knowledge flows and knowledge processes (their origin, the type of knowledge they carry on and their directionality) as determinants for the emergence of diverse international strategies embraced by single firms or by populations of firms within ecosystems, networks, global value chains or alliances.

Despite digital technologies constituting important antecedents and critical factors for the internationalization process, and international businesses in general, and operating cross borders implies the enactment of highly knowledge-intensive processes, current literature still fails to provide a holistic picture of how firms strategically use what they know and seek out what they do not know in the international environment, using the affordances of digital technologies.

The conditions that are constantly changing and transforming by digital technologies in today's world have forced businesses to think strategically and to comply with the rules and processes of strategic management. Technologies, such as the internet of things, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and big data, especially in the Industry 4.0 ecosystem, cause some conflicts or constructive and destructive effects on the management approaches and management strategies of businesses. Businesses need to understand these technologies and their effects to maintain their existence and manage their resources and capabilities effectively and strategically. In this chapter, it is aimed to examine the conflicts with destructive and constructive effects of digital technologies on the strategic management of enterprises. For this purpose, the literature was searched qualitatively, and a conceptual study was carried out. At the beginning of the chapter, strategic management literature was researched, and strategic management approaches and views were examined. In the next part, digital technologies in the Industry 4.0 ecosystem are explained. In the last part, digital technologies and their impacts in terms of strategic management approaches (position approach, resource-based approach, and complementing views of resources-based approach) have been examined.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the strategic management of a technology-enabled shift from a product-centric to a service-centric logic and to identify the sociotechnical dynamics underlying this transition. The study focuses on how manufacturers manage to create value in industrial markets through digital servitization.

An abductive research approach is used to investigate two manufacturing firms, and an interpretive framework is used as an analytical template. A cross-case analysis is conducted.

The case companies strategically managed sociotechnical processes of digitization to co-create value. Their service orientation delineates dissimilarity in terms of digital servitization. It reflects a viable ecosystem that moves toward datatization through adaptation in one case and a viable ecosystem that moves toward digitization through reconfiguration in the other case.

A theoretically grounded, empirically informed framework is proposed to detect transformational mechanisms to manage value co-creation in digitally servitized contexts, thus contributing to ecosystem viability.

This is the first study to adopt a system perspective such as the viable system approach combined with service-dominant logic to reconceptualize the overall sociotechnical processes and the underlying mechanisms leading to digitized value creation. In line with a systems view and a systematic process based on a transformative attitude toward digital servitization, the empirically informed framework identifies specific co-creation activities and recursive feedback loops.

This paper aims to explore the research field of digital transformation in small and medium enterprises (SMEs), considering the importance of SMEs in the economic development of countries.

Considering the contributions of researchers and the challenges of SMEs to transform their business models, in this paper, the authors conducted a scientometric analysis using CiteSpace that included 448 documents indexed in Scopus.

The authors appreciated the growth in the number of publications that have studied the digital transformation process in SMEs, showing a niche of researchers interested in the flourishing research topic. Likewise, the authors identified the intention of SMEs to adopt digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing, data analytics, electronic commerce and the Internet of Things.

This paper is a valuable resource for academics and researchers in information systems, decision-makers in digital transformation in SMEs and governmental organisations concerned with digital technologies adoption in SMEs to achieve digital transformation and increase competitiveness and productivity.

This study used CiteSpace to conduct a scientometric analysis to explore how researchers have focused on frameworks and maturity models for measuring SME readiness, the impact of Industry 4.0 on SMEs, guides for helping managers evaluate their Industry 4.0 positioning, the development and implementation of digital business strategies for SMEs, the presentation of cases of SMEs that have driven digital transformation and future research opportunities.

This paper aims to identify the dimensions of digital platforms' services quality and their impact on customers' purchase intent based on customer experience.

The research has a mixed method. Qualitative data is gathered by using of systematic literature review and Delphi method and quantitative data is gathered through survey of 412 experts from three well-known restaurant industry platforms. These restaurant digital platforms were Snapfood, Changal and Chelivery.

The results indicate the effect of platforms' service quality dimensions on customer hedonic and cognitive experiences. Also, the results indicate that the platforms' customers attach different priority to the various dimensions of platforms' services quality which are platform services' ease of use, platform information quality, services and products quality, platform customers interaction, platform design, platform response speed, platform services' trustiness, platform services' security and platform responsibility. Finally, the results showed that all of these dimensions have positive impact on customers' purchase intent based on their experiences.

The development of digital service platforms despite being new, has recently great progress, but, many dimensions of digital platforms' services quality have been not well-known yet. The present research has cleared the subject.

Digital disruption has posed challenges to managers. Metaverse is one of the fastest-growing digital transformations (DTs) impacting business across the globe. There needs to be more literature on the academic prospect relating to metaverse. This article aims to analyze and evaluate the publications to highlight themes, opportunities and contemporary challenges of metaverse in business management to get insights about the challenges posed to managers through such transformation.

Over 74 articles from 2006 to 2022 were collected using the Scopus database. These were further analyzed to understand how previous research captures metaverse in the domain of business management and the amount to which has been studied in terms of publication productivity, country productivity, affiliation productivity and author productivity, Top-cited documents, keywords analysis, network visualization of keywords and bibliometric coupling. The authors also gathered literature related to metaverse in the field of business management and its uses for managers.

The authors' findings reveal that metaverse in business management has gained momentum in publications since 2022. Approximately 68% of total publications and 56% of total citations were from 2022. USA is the flagbearer of metaverse around the globe and the University of Georgia is leading in affiliation productivity. Network analysis through Vosviewer shows that keywords metaverse and virtual reality (VR) have the highest co-occurrences and link strength.

This article is relevant to those interested in how the world of virtual workspace is making a paradigm shift in management development. This study aims to review previous literary works through bibliometrics and visualization approaches comprehensively. Metaverse is changing the schema of the business world in terms of various strategies that this article addressed. Such studies have not been previously carried out.

This research aims to discuss the success of digital transformation focusing on the role of IT and management commitment in digitalization together with sectorial relevance as influencing factors. According to the literature, these dimensions are key elements of digitalization, and there is no consensus on their decisiveness. The authors measure the success of digital transformation with the digital innovation. The research is part of ongoing work, in which the IT-related practice of Hungarian organizations has been explored on an annual basis since 2009.

The research methodology is a combined one; both qualitative and quantitative methods were applied including surveying digital transformation literature, interviews with key representatives of Hungarian organizations, developing a survey to collect quantitative data, data collection and processing with PLS-SEM.

The results revealed that the digital innovations are strongly determined by business, management commitment and, to a far lesser extent, by strategy. In the case of digital transformation, the role of IT departments and the services they provide are less relevant.

The most important limitation of the research is the size and composition of the sample. Results do not present the situation of a specific industrial sector.

Digital technologies influence and disrupt practically every industry; the development of information and communication technology has changed economies all over the world. Decisive factors of digital transformations are widely researched, but there is no consensus about them. This research contributes to understanding the role of IT department and their services in this process together with leadership, sectorial relevance as influencing factors.

The paper refers to the framework of ambidexterity to explain the strategic paths of manufacturing SMEs in turbulent times, by investigating SMEs' strategic reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The authors adopted an inductive approach methodology. Using a qualitative research method, Italian manufacturing SMEs in different industries were interviewed to outline how they have faced the negative effects of the COVID-19 by considering the strategies implemented during the pandemic.

The study identifies three ambidextrous strategies for manufacturing SMEs to positively overcome the COVID-19 crisis: (1) playing different roles within the same market (business-to-business and business-to-consumer) simultaneously, (2) simultaneous entrance and management of multiple markets and (3) exploiting manufacturing knowledge for exploring product and business model innovation (simultaneous learning processes).

Results enrich the theoretical discussion on ambidexterity and SMEs, by stressing the strategic dimension of ambidexterity and including a more fine-grained analysis of the different firm’ strategic paths in times of crisis.

The paper provides practical suggestions for manufacturing SMEs on how they can react during turbulent times and crises by implementing ambidextrous strategies also thanks to the use of digital technologies.

This paper contributes to outlining the conditions for SMEs' resilience in the international competitive context by highlighting the perspective of ambidexterity based on the analysis of multiple case studies from manufacturing industries.

This paper aims to first, identify the external and internal factors that a company needs to analyze when formulating its digital platform strategy. Based on the framework of PESTNPG (political economic social and culture technological population and globalization) and internal analysis a company should analyze both internal and external factors to formulate its digital platform strategy. For companies from emerging markets the institutional-based market created by national or local governments is important for digital platform strategy. Second dynamic capability theory and its linkages to digital platform strategy. The dynamic capabilities view is considered as a primary theoretical lens in the strategy literature to analyze a company’s strategies to achieve sustainable competitive advantages. To carry out a successful digital platform strategy companies need to build strong dynamic capabilities to capture or create opportunities and reconfigure their resources simultaneously. Third the advantages and disadvantages of different digital platform strategies (i.e. an independent digital platform and online–offline integration platform) and the possible consequences and risks of different strategies. It is important to evaluate different types of digital platform strategies that require different capabilities in terms of business structure product structure revenue structure organizational structure and technology architecture. A company needs to link these capabilities to a digital platform strategy to enable the integration (or separation) of online business with offline business. It also increases the accuracy and efficiency of online business. Fourth key points of digital platform strategy implementation. Companies need to identify key profit models for their digital platform to promote business growth and financial returns. It is equally important to increase customer value by leveraging its digital exhibition platform and to learn to use digital technology to foster organizational dematerialization.

Zhejiang Meorient Commerce & Exhibition Inc. (hereinafter referred to as “Meorient”) was a leading company in the exhibition industry in China. The unexpected outbreak of COVID-19 plunged Meorient into a state of emergency that forced it to fight for survival. Further, China had launched a national strategy of Digital China, which created new market opportunities for Meorient. As a result, Meorient gradually developed and launched its digital exhibition services in 2015. Meorient suffered significant losses in 2020 due to COVID-19 and had to formulate a new strategy based on a digital exhibition platform in 2021. Chairman Pan Jianjun had two options. One was a purely digital platform strategy without the original offline exhibition business. The other one was an online and offline integration strategy. Which option was the best way forward for Meorient? Pan had to make a choice. Some of the top management team members believed Meorient should completely transform into a digital platform company and provide comprehensive online digital exhibition services. Over the previous 20 years, Meorient had accumulated a large amount of data from domestic and foreign exhibitors and professional buyers and had gradually developed a digital exhibition platform. It was one of the companies that pioneered digital transformation within China’s exhibition industry. More conservative thinking held that Meorient's strategy should focus more narrowly on the integration of online and offline exhibition businesses. Toward the post-pandemic era, China’s national strategy of “Digital China” accelerated the development of digital infrastructures. During such critical transitional period, Meorient had to choose wisely if it was to sustain its profits or even survive.

The case is aimed at students in undergraduate, MBA, short course executive, EMBA or other executive education programs, especially where digital transformation is featured subject matter.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy