2026· Journal of Entrepreneurship, Management and Innovation· 0 citations· 54 references
TL;DR
This study is among the first to integrate innovation, agility, and digital resilience into a unified parallel mediation framework linking digital transformation to sustainable business growth, empirically validated in a multi-country Middle Eastern context.
Abstract
Purpose
This study examines how digital transformation (DT) influences sustainable business growth (SBG) in Middle Eastern firms, proposing and empirically testing a parallel mediation model in which innovation, organizational agility, and digital resilience serve as transmitting organizational capabilities. Grounded in the resource-based view and dynamic capabilities theory, the study addresses the theoretical gap arising from the fragmented treatment of digitalization, innovation, agility, and resilience as isolated constructs, and the empirical gap stemming from the near-exclusive focus of existing research on Western and manufacturing-dominated contexts. METHODOLOGY: A structured online questionnaire was administered between May and August 2025 to managers and senior professionals in firms actively engaged in digital transformation initiatives across five Middle Eastern economies: Lebanon, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. Of 410 distributed invitations, 339 responses were received, and following the removal of 15 duplicate entries and incomplete responses, a final sample of 324 valid responses was retained. Data was analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) via SmartPLS 4.0.9.6, with bootstrapping based on 5,000 resamples to assess mediation effects.
Findings
Digital transformation exerts significant positive effects on innovation (β = 0.666), agility (β = 0.613), and digital resilience (β = 0.530), as well as a direct effect on sustainable business growth (β = 0.191). Agility (β = 0.305) and digital resilience (β = 0.209) significantly mediate the DT–SBG relationship, whereas the mediation path through innovation is non-significant (β = 0.044). The total indirect effect amounts to 0.327, yielding a Variance Accounted For of 63.1%, confirming partial mediation. IMPLICATIONS: Theoretically, the findings extend dynamic capabilities theory by empirically demonstrating that digital transformation functions as an enabling infrastructure rather than a direct performance mechanism, with agility and resilience constituting the primary conversion pathways to sustainable growth. Practically, the results advise managers and policymakers on digitally transforming economies to prioritize the development of adaptive responsiveness and resilience-oriented governance alongside technological investment, as technology adoption alone does not guarantee sustainability outcomes. ORIGINALITY & VALUE: This study is among the first to integrate innovation, agility, and digital resilience into a unified parallel mediation framework linking digital transformation to sustainable business growth, empirically validated in a multi-country Middle Eastern context, a setting underrepresented in the extant digital transformation literature.
The construction industry operates in a highly volatile environment characterized by economic fluctuations, project uncertainties, and unexpected disruptions. Therefore, to withstand disruptions, firms increasingly seek to build resilience using digital tools alongside the development of organizational capabilities. However, the existing literature has broadly examined digital transformation (DT), dynamic capabilities (DCs), and organizational resilience (OR) either in isolation or through pairwise relationships. This study addresses that gap by investigating how DCs drive DT, which in turn fosters resilience in the construction industry. A multimethod qualitative design was adopted, combining 10 semistructured interviews with senior construction professionals, including consultants, managers, digital leaders, and chief executive officers (CEOs), with content analysis of six industry reports. Participants brought experience from both advanced economies, such as those in Europe and Australia, and emerging markets, including South Asia, providing insights into how contextual factors shape digitalization and resilience strategies. The findings demonstrate that DCs, through their microfoundations of sensing, seizing, and transforming, are critical enablers of DT. Digital technologies, such as building information modeling (BIM), artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing, drones, and the Internet of Things (IoT), have been found to enhance efficiency, sustainability, and agility. Simultaneously, DT supports resilience by enabling firms to anticipate risks, adapt their operations, and recover effectively from disruptions using advanced digital tools. Notably, DT emerged as a transforming mechanism that operationalizes DCs into resilience outcomes. This study contributes to theory by extending the DC framework to a construction-specific context and by conceptualizing DT as a bridge between DCs and resilience. For practitioners, it highlights the importance of digital leadership, workforce training, and adaptive organizational structures in embedding resilience at the design and planning stages of projects. Future research should further examine these relationships across regions and subsectors to refine generalizability.
N. Wijayarathne, Indra Gunawan, F. Schultmann· Journal of construction engi...· 0 citations
Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) increasingly need to reconfigure how they create, deliver, and capture value in response to digitalisation, sustainability demands, and environmental uncertainty. This study systematically reviews 162 English-language articles published in SSCI-indexed journals to integrate fragmented research on business model innovation (BMI) in SMEs. Descriptive analysis, keyword co-occurrence analysis, and article-level qualitative content analysis are combined. The findings identify four broad knowledge domains and show that 41 studies treat BMI primarily as an outcome, 44 as an organisational process, 17 as an antecedent of subsequent outcomes, and 36 as part of a combined causal relationship; a further 24 studies are descriptive or typological. Across these roles, the literature explains BMI through resource mobilisation, entrepreneurial action logics, absorptive and dynamic capabilities, experimentation, and network mobilisation. Its effects on performance, growth, resilience, internationalisation, and sustainability depend on complementary resources, implementation capabilities, stakeholder alignment, and environmental conditions. The evidence supports an adaptive and iterative interpretation of SME BMI, but direct evidence of recursive feedback remains limited. Resource constraints also have conditional effects, stimulating bricolage and focused experimentation in some circumstances while inhibiting substantive change when shortages become severe. The review provides an integrative synthesis specific to SMEs and advances digital business model innovation research by explaining how digital pressures are translated into changes in value proposition, value creation and delivery, and value capture through organisational and relational mechanisms.
Bi Zhang, Nurul Atasha Jamaludin, Shanshan Yue et al.· Future Business Journal· 0 citations
Digital transformation is now one of the key engines of entrepreneurial behavior and company development, but there is still a lack of empirical evidence on the creation of digital ecosystems, especially in the Middle East and North African (MENA) region. This paper examines how digital capabilities affect the sustainable development of entrepreneurial ventures and how the relationship changes depending on the three emerging digital ecosystems of Lebanon, Iraq, and Egypt. Data were collected through a structured online questionnaire developed using Google Forms and distributed via email, WhatsApp, and the Prolific research platform to owners, managers, and key decision-makers of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). A total of 250 questionnaires were distributed, yielding 131 responses, of which 22 were excluded after screening for completeness and eligibility. The final analytical sample comprised 109 valid firm-level responses from Egypt (n = 51), Lebanon (n = 34), and Iraq (n = 24). The study quantitatively assesses digital capabilities on several dimensions, including digital infrastructure adoption, data and analytics capabilities, digital product development, and digital revenue integration, and attributes those capabilities to sustainable business growth indicators (the revenue stability, scalability, profitability, and long-term resilience). The results showed that more robust digital capabilities have more significant impacts on sustainable business growth outcomes, whereas basic digitalization has no significant effect. Further, the analysis found no statistically significant moderating effect of ecosystem contextual factors, including institutional quality and digital maturity, on the relationship between digital capabilities and sustainable business growth across Lebanon, Iraq, and Egypt. This study contributes to the body of knowledge of entrepreneurship and sustainability in emerging markets by integrating Resource-Based View, Dynamic Capabilities Theory, and Digital Ecosystem Theory. The findings have practical implications for entrepreneurs and policymakers who aim to use digital transformation to attain sustainable entrepreneurship in the vulnerable and dynamic digital ecosystems.
Cynthia El Hajj, Hady El Samra, Nancy Saliba et al.· Sustainability· 0 citations
This study investigates the influence of digital leadership, digital dexterity, and digital culture on green innovation and circular manufacturing, while examining the moderating role of government regulatory intervention within an integrated Resource‐Based View theoretical framework. A quantitative cross‐sectional survey methodology was employed, collecting primary data from 372 manufacturing firm employees across China with a response rate of 32%. Hypothesized relationships were tested using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS‐SEM) via SmartPLS 4.0, with all measurement scales adapted from validated prior research works. Empirical results confirmed all seven hypotheses, establishing that digital leadership, digital dexterity, and digital culture each exert significant positive effects on green innovation, which in turn positively influences circular manufacturing adoption. Government regulatory intervention significantly moderated and strengthened the relationships between all three digital capability dimensions and green innovation, confirming its role as a critical institutional amplifier. This study makes an original theoretical contribution by integrating digital organizational capabilities, green innovation, and circular manufacturing within a unified RBV framework, while introducing regulatory intervention as a boundary condition. Practically, findings advocate for firm‐level investments in digital capabilities and progressive regulatory policy strengthening as complementary mechanisms for accelerating sustainable industrial transitions.
M. Song, Yihan Ke, Xinke Du· Corporate Social Responsibil...· 0 citations
Purpose: Retail SMEs in China operate in a highly volatile digital commerce ecosystem with rapidly shifting consumer demand, intense platform-based competition, and frequent technological and regulatory changes. This study examines how digital transformation (DT) improves firm performance by strengthening organizational resilience (OR) and whether environmental dynamism (ED) moderates the resilience–performance relationship.
Design/methodology/approach: A quantitative survey was conducted with retail SMEs, and the conceptual model was tested using PLS-SEM to assess measurement properties and estimate direct, mediating, and moderating effects.
Findings: The results show that DT directly improves firm performance and significantly enhances OR, indicating that digital initiatives in retail SMEs create value by boosting efficiency, market responsiveness, and the ability to withstand shocks and adapt quickly. OR partially mediates the DT–performance link, showing that resilience is a key capability through which DT yields superior business outcomes. ED positively moderates the OR–performance relationship, meaning that the performance benefits of organizational resilience increase under high market and technological volatility.
Research limitations/implications: This study uses cross-sectional, self-reported data, limiting causal inference and potentially introducing common method bias. Future research should apply longitudinal or multi-source designs and examine additional mechanisms (e.g., organizational agility, innovation capability) and contextual contingencies (e.g., competitive intensity, regulatory turbulence).
Practical implications: For managers of Chinese retail SMEs, the findings highlight the need to prioritize DT initiatives that improve real-time environmental sensing, speed up data-driven decisions, and enable rapid operational reconfiguration—dynamic capabilities that underpin resilience in highly volatile retail settings. Policymakers can strengthen these SMEs’ competitiveness by offering targeted capability-building programs (e.g., digital literacy, data analytics training, resilience-focused technology upgrades) and by enhancing digital infrastructure and governance to reduce excessive environmental uncertainty for small retailers.
Originality/value: This study extends understanding of DT in retail SMEs by explaining when and how DT improves performance: it identifies OR as a central capability mechanism and ED as a key boundary condition in a dynamic, platform-mediated retail context.
Tao Mei, S. Idris· International journal of res...· 0 citations
This study empirically investigated the effect of digital transformation on innovation performance in manufacturing firms and examined the mediating role of absorptive capacity and the moderating role of R&D human capital. As manufacturing industries increasingly experience rapid technological changes driven by artificial intelligence (AI), big data, the Internet of Things (IoT), and smart manufacturing systems, digital transformation has emerged as a critical strategic factor for enhancing organizational competitiveness and innovation capability. However, prior studies have suggested that the adoption of digital technologies alone does not necessarily guarantee sustainable innovation performance. Therefore, this study attempted to explain the relationship between digital transformation and innovation performance from the perspectives of organizational learning and human capital. Data were collected from 402 employees working in Korean manufacturing firms through online and offline surveys. The collected data were analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) with SPSS 29.0 and SmartPLS 4.0. The results indicated that digital transformation had a significant positive effect on innovation performance and absorptive capacity. In addition, absorptive capacity positively influenced innovation performance and partially mediated the relationship between digital transformation and innovation performance. Furthermore, R&D human capital significantly moderated the relationship between digital transformation and innovation performance, indicating that the positive effect of digital transformation on innovation performance was stronger in firms with higher levels of R&D human capital. The findings suggest that digital transformation contributes to innovation performance not only through technological efficiency but also through enhanced organizational learning and knowledge utilization capabilities. This study provides academic implications by integrating digital transformation, absorptive capacity, and R&D human capital into a comprehensive research framework. In addition, it offers practical implications for manufacturing firms by emphasizing the importance of organizational learning systems and the development of R&D personnel capabilities alongside digital technology investment.
S. Jang· Human Resources Management a...· 0 citations