Digital transformation as the fuel for sailing toward sustainable success: the roles of coordination mechanisms and social norms
Journal of Enterprise Information Management
ISSN: 1741-0398
Article publication date: 29 April 2024
Issue publication date: 13 May 2024
Abstract
Purpose
Sailing toward sustainability is becoming the strategic focus of shipping firms. Drawing on organizational information processing theory (OIPT) and the theory of planned behavior (TPB), we investigated the impact of digital transformation (DT) on shipping firms’ sustainable management performance and the boundary conditions guiding this relationship.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors examined the hypotheses by employing hierarchical linear modeling on two-wave time-lagged data from 189 shipping firm employees in China.
Findings
The results suggest that a shipping firm’s DT is positively associated with its sustainable management performance and that the relationship is strengthened by having better cross-functional and customer coordination mechanisms. Furthermore, our three-way interaction analyses show that while injunctive norms in a shipping firm’s networks can strengthen the contingency roles of both cross-functional and customer coordination mechanisms, descriptive norms alone significantly influence customer coordination.
Originality/value
Drawing on organizational information processing and planned behavior theories, the present research provides new insights into leveraging DT for sailing toward sustainable success. Moreover, this study extends the current understandings of the boundary conditions of the relationship between DT and sustainable management performance by showing the two-way and three-way interaction effects of coordination mechanisms and subjective norms. The findings of the present research can be utilized as effective strategies for promoting sustainable management performance.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This work is supported by Zhejiang Provincial Philosophy and Social Science Planning Project (24NDQN127YBM) and Ningbo Philosophy and Social Science Planning Project (G2023-2-56). The authors are also grateful to the editors and anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedbacks and insightful comments.
Citation
Pang, Q., Cai, L., Wang, X. and Fang, M. (2024), "Digital transformation as the fuel for sailing toward sustainable success: the roles of coordination mechanisms and social norms", Journal of Enterprise Information Management, Vol. 37 No. 3, pp. 1069-1096. https://doi.org/10.1108/JEIM-06-2023-0330
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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