Digital transformation and enterprise market value: a perspective on knowledge search and recombination
Journal of Knowledge Management
ISSN: 1367-3270
Article publication date: 23 January 2025
Issue publication date: 13 February 2025
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore the underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions through which equipment manufacturing enterprises can capture market value from digital transformation, with a specific focus on the roles of knowledge search and knowledge recombination.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses a double fixed-effects model to test the hypotheses, using a unique data set of “firm-year” observations from 739 publicly listed equipment manufacturing companies in China, spanning the period from 2018 to 2022.
Findings
Digital transformation drives market value creation in equipment manufacturing enterprises through both breakthrough knowledge recombination (BKR) and progressive knowledge recombination (PKR). In addition, the analysis of marginal conditions reveals that diversified knowledge search serves as a substitute for digital transformation in promoting BKR, while also positively moderating the relationship between digital transformation and PKR.
Originality/value
Grounded in the knowledge-based view theoretical framework, this study introduces the novel concepts of BKR and PKR and systematically examines how digital transformation impacts market value in equipment manufacturing enterprises.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank helpful comments from editors and anonymous reviewers. The study was supported by the key project of the Sichuan Provincial Philosophy and Social Science Foundation (Grant No. SCJJ24ND005), the Major Research Project of Sichuan Provincial Key Research Base of Social Sciences (Grant No. Xq24A03), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Sichuan University to Building a World-class University (Grant No. XDHYJ2023-01) and the Central Universities (Grant No. 2024ZY-SX12).
CRediT authorship contribution statement: Shicheng Huang: conceptualization, formal analysis, data curation, writing – original draft. Yaqi Wang: conceptualization, methodology, writing – review and editing, supervision. Fumin Deng: conceptualization, writing – review and editing, supervision. Xiaoya Gong: writing – review and editing.
Declaration of competing interest: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Citation
Huang, S., Wang, Y., Gong, X. and Deng, F. (2025), "Digital transformation and enterprise market value: a perspective on knowledge search and recombination", Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol. 29 No. 3, pp. 990-1014. https://doi.org/10.1108/JKM-09-2024-1050
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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