Sustaining the current or pursuing the new: incumbent digital transformation strategies in the financial service industr
- PDF / 1,028,454 Bytes
- 43 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 0 Downloads / 201 Views
Sustaining the current or pursuing the new: incumbent digital transformation strategies in the financial service industry A configurational perspective on firm performance Maik Dehnert1
Received: 14 June 2020 / Accepted: 12 November 2020 The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Digital transformation (DT) is a major challenge for traditional companies. Despite the term, DT is relatively new; its substance is not: a whole stream of research has examined the relationship between DT and firm performance with contradictory findings. Most of these studies have chosen a linear correlational approach, however, did not analyze the holistic interplay of DT dimensions, leading to firm performance. This applies especially to the mature financial services industry and the future perspectives of traditional financial service providers (FSP). Hence, it remains an open question for both research and practice what DT configurations have a positive impact on firm performance. Against this background, the aim of this exploratory study is to examine how DT dimensions are systemically connected to firm performance of incumbent FSP. Drawing on a qualitative-empirical research approach with case data from 83 FSP, we identify digital configurations along different levels of firm performance. Our findings suggest an evolution of digital configurations of FSP, leading to five empirical standard types from which only one managed to establish a profound basis of DT. Keywords Digital transformation Banking Insurance Financial services Configurational analysis fsQCA JEL Classification M15 Maik Dehnert is a research associate and project leader of ‘‘Banking’’ at the Chair of Business Informatics and Digitalization. His research focuses on digital transformation strategies, digital business models of incumbent firms and changing consumer behavior. His research has been published in Electronic Markets. & Maik Dehnert [email protected] 1
Chair of Business Informatics and Digitalization, University of Potsdam, August-Bebel-Str. 89, 14482 Potsdam, Germany
123
Business Research
1 Introduction Management scholars have examined the difficulties of industry incumbents to innovate their business (Eklund and Kapoor 2019). Especially the financial services (FS) industry is undergoing a radical transformation. The previously stable market shows unprecedented competitive dynamics, regulatory changes and non-/nearbanks as asymmetric competitors in the day and age of digital technologies. Practitioners speak of a disruptive change that could decrease the importance of traditional financial service providers (FSP), exemplified by a recent practitioner study (McKinsey 2019) that tackles future industry perspectives regarding profitability measures. Our article focuses on DT of incumbent FSP with the characteristics of high market power, revenue streams from traditional services, and the presence of physical branches (Chiorazzo et al. 2018). Incumbent banks and insurance companies play an important role in society and for sustainable development, as th
Data Loading...
