Managerial Innovation as a Lever for Digital Transformation Success: Toward an Integrated Organizational Value Creation Framework
Abstract
The accelerating pace of digital transformation has fundamentally restructured competitive landscapes across industries, compelling organizations to reconsider not only their technological investments but, more critically, their managerial architectures and innovation capacities. While extant scholarship has extensively examined the technological dimensions of digital transformation, comparatively limited attention has been devoted to managerial innovation as a primary enabling condition for sustained digital transformation success. This article addresses that gap by developing a theoretically grounded, integrative conceptual framework—the Integrated Organizational Value Creation Framework (IOVCF)—that articulates the causal pathways through which managerial innovation drives digital transformation and ultimately generates organizational value. Anchored in four complementary theoretical perspectives—Dynamic Capabilities Theory, the Resource-Based View (RBV), Organizational Change Theory, and Socio-Technical Systems Theory—the framework models a cascading logic: managerial innovation cultivates organizational capabilities (agility, learning, adaptability, and collaborative intelligence), which in turn facilitate digital transformation success (technology adoption, process digitalization, data integration, and digital innovation), culminating in multi-dimensional organizational value creation (operational performance, resilience, stakeholder satisfaction, and sustainable competitive advantage). Twelve formal research propositions are derived and theoretically justified. Managerial implications emphasize that digital transformation leaders must invest in organizational redesign, agile management practices, digital culture formation, knowledge management systems, employee empowerment, and collaborative ecosystems alongside—and often prior to—technology deployment. A rich agenda for future empirical research is outlined, encompassing cross-national validation, SME contexts, AI-enabled transformation, and sustainability-oriented digital strategies.