关键词: 高端装备制造企业, 数字化转型, 必要条件分析, 模糊集定性比较分析

Abstract:    The deep integration of new digital technologies, such as the Internet, big data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and supply chain, with the manufacturing industry has released tremendous energy, which is becoming a key power to reorganize factor resources, reshape the economic structure and change the competition pattern, and also an important driving force to boost Chinese economic growth, and provides an effective path to upgrade Chinese industries. In particular, since China proposed the National Big Data Strategy in 2015, relevant policies have been issued, and then digital transformation becomes the strategic high point of the new-round of industrial competition. High-end equipment manufacturing (HEM) industryis located at the top of the manufacturing value chain and the core of the industrial chain. Besides, characterized by high technology, high-added value, and good growth, HEM industry has a significant leading role in the overall and long-term economic and social development, and has a great strategic importance for China to become a manufacturing power. However, the “double-ended squeeze from both international and domestic markets” brought by developed countries, the core components suffer from “strangleholds”, and HEM growth suffers from insufficient vitality. Under this situation that HEM industry is massive but not strong enough and urgent to be upgraded, the digital transformation has become a “game breaker” to reconstruct the competitive pattern and solve the old and new problems.In order to seize the opportunities in the wave of digitization, more and more HEM enterprises apply digital technology to all aspects of their product lifecycle, and gradually implement the transformation from informationization to digitalization. However, the complex and changing environment and the lack of priori experience caused most HEM enterprises to face great challenges and even failures in the process of digital transformation. For this reason, the issue of digital transformation of HEM enterprises has attracted great attention from the academia and political circles. Currently, scholars mostly focus on the enterprise digital transformation from the perspective of individual factors. While the complex system view presents that digital transformation is a complex systemic project, and it is obvious that only by considering the net effect of a single factor, we cannot effectively analyze the interaction between multiple factors and their complex causal relationship with enterprise digital transformation. Therefore, in order to reveal the “black box” of enterprise digital transformation driven by multi-factor linkage matching, firstly, on the basis of TOE analysis framework, this paper developed a theoretical model for the digital transformation of HEM enterprises from the perspective of configuration. Secondly, taking 68 HEM enterprises from 2016 to 2020 as the research samples, this paper utilized necessary condition analysis (NCA) and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis(fsQCA) methods to explore the paths of digital transformation of HEM enterprises driven by dimensional antecedent conditions:“technology-organization-environment”. The results of the study showed that: (1)Necessary condition analysis presents that any single antecedent condition cannot be the necessary condition to trigger thedigital transformation of HEM enterprises. (2) The digital transformation configuration ofhigh-level enterprises indicates that antecedent factors, such as technology, organization and environment, through the effect of “multiple concurrency”, have led to five configurations that can be categorized into two paths: digital environment incubation and internal and external linkage, and the antecedent conditions of some configurations have overlapping and potentially substitutive relationships. Meanwhile, compared with the digital transformation configuration of non-high-level enterprises, antecedent factors of the environmental dimension are the main reason leading to the failure of enterprise digital transformation. Based on the above study conclusions, the following insights are obtained. First, HEM enterprises should make full use of their external and internal resources to promote diversified digital transformation. Second, the government should strengthen the macro guidance and policy support for the digital transformation of HEM enterprises.

Key words: high-end equipment manufacturing enterprise, digital transformation, necessary condition analysis, fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis