Leveraging social capital for digital transformation: The role of ambidexterity and familial orientation

Abstract

In pursuing competitive advantage, businesses are diffusing new digital technologies across their value chains and, by doing so, catalyzing significant organizational changes in operational processes and strategic approaches. This widespread evolution of businesses has prompted significant questions regarding the drivers of digital change, the necessary resources, and the capabilities that need to be developed or reconfigured. Our paper focuses on the role of intangible resources, such as a firm's social capital, and its specific implications for the broader research on this phenomenon. Consistent with the resource-based view, we examine the role of different types of social capital as critical resources in the digital transformation process while also considering the mediating role of the balancing act of the capabilities around business alignment and adaptation encompassed in the concept of ambidexterity. Furthermore, we introduce a contextual dimension to our study by examining family involvement in a firm as a significant factor influencing how businesses shape their digital goals and allocate resources toward digital transformation. Our paper addresses this under-explored research field by drawing on a large, cross-sectional dataset from an online panel study with 582 management-level participants from UK firms. After testing our hypotheses, our study's results indicate that bridging and bonding social capital resources significantly promote digital transformation by indirectly developing an ambidextrous orientation. Moreover, familial orientation strengthens both relationships. This research is currently one of the few studies providing empirical evidence on the relationship between digital transformation, its antecedents, and, specifically, the role of intangible resources.