Chief Digital Officer and organizational creativity toward digitalization

Through the microfoundation lens, this article explores
how dynamic capabilities (DCs) of Chief Digital Officers
(CDOs) trigger digitalization and organizational creativity of 2124
small to medium enterprises (SMEs) across 39 different European
countries. As a result, the significant DCs are substantive and
adaptive capabilities, which are offering new solutions, seizing new
opportunities, and coping with changes. Besides, those two DCs
also assume a mediator role in triggering organizational creativity
within SMEs. In terms of theoretical and managerial implications,
threefold contributions are provided: the first one offers a fresh
study on the digital transformation context of SMEs through a
microfoundation perspective; the second emphasizes the crucial
role of CDOs as supported and remarked upon previous studies;
and, then, the third one stresses out the importance of the individual
leverage to generate creativity by the moderating role of DCs. By
highlighting the originality of the research, since CDOs are seen to
be the spark of unique ideas and innovations in the organization,
further insights are proposed to position the need for conceptualizing
new paths for developing technologies toward organizational
creativity and humanity.