Conceptualizing the Role of Organizational Capabilities in Enhancing Firms Readiness for Digital Business Transformation

Abstract

The rapid developments in digital technologies caused digital disruption for almost all existing businesses. Digital disruption represents high threat for existing business as the new innovated services can partially or completely substitute traditional services. Many researchers agreed that incumbent firms looking to survive in the digital era should proceed with digital transformation strategy. However, many of the digital transformation initiatives fail to meet organizations ambitions. Scholars referred this failure to the ignoring of the development of the capabilities on which the planning and execution of digital transformation depend. The lack of understanding process of digital transformation motivated the researcher to conduct this study aiming to examine the role of organizational capabilities in improving firm’s readiness for a successful digital transformation process. The researcher will empirically validate a proposed model for digital transformation readiness. The 260-sample size will constitute of mid-level employees in telecommunication firms in Yemen who will answer the study questionnaire. The collected data will be analyzed with Structure Equation Modeling (SEM) method. The proposed model that represents new contribution in knowledge body of digital transformation will assist managers to assess their firm’s readiness for the digital transformation and the researcher recommends to conducts further studies to extend this model to incorporate more factors.