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This paper aims to understand the current state and challenges of deploying collaborative applications in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Germany.

A survey of 101 SMEs in Germany showed how intensively collaborative applications are used today and the positive and negative effects associated with their use. Analyses proved correlations between the use of collaborative applications, the need for cooperation within SMEs and the effects and benefits of their use.

The company representatives surveyed reported a positive balance of their pro and con experiences with collaborative applications. The use of collaborative applications closely interacts with work-related demands: the more complex the requirements of joint action, the broader the benefits and challenges are of their use. The data also revealed three gaps between demand of cooperation and use of specific applications, supporting the argument that implementation of collaborative applications is challenging for SMEs. A successful use requires major changes in work systems and culture of the company.

The data of the survey are not representative of the population of SMEs in Germany.

These empirical findings contribute a unique as well as substantive view of today’s state of digitalisation of project communication and management within SMEs, specifically their deployment of collaborative software.

The purpose of this paper is to conduct a systematic literature review for industry 4.0 maturity modeling research studies to obtain a clear view of the current state-of-the-art. Identifying characteristics of the studies; gaps, limitations and highlighted features has been aimed to guide future research studies.

The study includes a systematic literature review conducted on Scopus, IEEE Xplore and Web of Science databases and 90 publications have been reviewed. A novel qualitative taxonomy has been constructed which aims to reduce the cognitive load of the readers.

While industry 4.0 maturity modeling is an emerging concept and taking researchers’ attraction, review studies are still in infancy. Current review papers are inadequate in getting a clear idea about the concept, especially from the perspective of guiding future researchers. By the conducted approach of classification conducted in this paper, it has been seen that there are some challenges for improving the industry 4.0 maturity modeling.

Findings represented in this study can serve academicians and practitioners to develop and/or improve industry 4.0 maturity models.

The study includes a novel classification for the reviewed papers. Constructed taxonomy is among the first and tabular representations instead of prose analogy that aims to simplify the review of papers.

This research is set to assess the achievement of digital economy through digitalization adoption (DA) among Small Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). For more insightful findings, a comparison between the service-based and non-service-based industries was performed. Besides, it endeavours to identify the important and performing dimension of the Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) framework. The purpose of this paper is to address these issues.

Quantitative approach through purposive sampling technique was used to collect data from the SMEs. Variance-based structural equation modeling was adopted to assess the model and multi-group analysis (MGA) was executed to examine the difference between the two classified industries. For the identification of the dimension, Importance-Performance Map Aanalysis (IPMA) was carried out.

Technology and organization recorded significant positive influence on digitalization adoption but not environment. Digitalization adoption between the two classified industries shows divergent results. IPMA concur the importance and performance of the technology and organization dimension, in which SMEs shall focus on for digitalization adoption.

This is cross sectional research and data were collected at a single time frame. Hence, the result is a state-or-art finding. Assuming that if there are changes in government policies, the results may differ. Besides, there are other possible groupings that could affect the results in which is not covered in the present research.

The findings imply that the DA amongst SMEs has yet to achieve its full spectrum, which indicates Malaysia has yet to fully embrace digital economy. Nevertheless, DA is the fundamental for a successful digital economy.

This research provides the general public an overview that SMEs are adopting digitalization with various degree. This specifies that the society is paving towards digitalization with the SMEs actively adopting more digital technologies.

The novelty of this research arises from the utilization of the TOE framework to link to the achievement of the national digital economy. Additionally, current research adopted a rigorous approach to investigate the issue by using MGA, the hierarchical component model (HCM) and IPMA for holistic findings.

Organizations invest in novel digital innovations to improve their business processes. These innovations, including Industry 4.0 technologies, enable full organizational integration with business process management (BPM), thereby requiring interorganizational relationship (IOR) capabilities. Many organizations lack knowledge about areas of interorganizational (IO) capability for integrating digital innovations into their value chains. They therefore have difficulty understanding that, as a socio-technical concept, digitalization surpasses the intraorganizational level and requires tools to develop mandatory IOR capabilities. The authors’ systematic literature review (SLR) explores these capabilities within the discipline of BPM. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue.

This SLR follows the standard methodology for structuring a broad research field. The authors assessed capabilities relevant to manufacturing organizations from 58 academic articles published between 2011 and 2021.

Building on existing firm-centric capability frameworks, the authors developed individual capabilities into a novel framework of digital interorganizational value chain (DIOVC). The authors’ conceptual model provides a basis for researchers and practitioners to consider capabilities and the theoretical spectrum of IO value chains.

Future studies should validate these DIOVC capabilities as input for an updated model of BPM maturity aimed at improving business process performance through digital innovations.

This study provides organizations with IOR knowledge, supports decision makers in governing digital innovations and develops IO capabilities to improve their value chain performance.

The authors’ DIOVC capability framework is robust, with constructs and dimensions grounded in the literature, demonstrating theoretical and practical relevance.