Who is in the driving seat? Assessing innovation performance feedback and digital transformation of manufacturing enterprises

The use of digital technologies has enabled enterprises to enhance their innovation capabilities and reconstruct their competitive advantage throughout the wave of digital transformation. Previous research has examined the driving forces behind digital transformation through the lens of institutional theory, resource-based views, dynamic capacities, and upper echelons theory. However, these studies have ignored the fact that the decision makers with bounded rationality formulate digital transformation strategies based on "heuristic decisions". In order to address the above research gap, this study examines the impact of innovation expectation gap on digital transformation of enterprises based on the behavioral theory of the firm. In this paper, Chinese A-share manufacturing enterprises listed from 2010 to 2021 are used as the research sample. The results show that as the innovation expectation gap widens, enterprises will be more motivated to implement digital transformation to improve their innovation performance. Accordingly, the innovation expectation gap has a positive impact on the digital transformation of enterprises. After CEO power and CEO traits are embedded in the research framework, it is found that CEO power can strengthen the positive impact of innovation expectation gap on enterprise digital transformation. In addition, if the CEO has both functional diversity and digital literacy, CEO power's strengthening effect on the relationship between innovation expectation gap and enterprise digital transformation can also be enhanced. The study provides new insights for the study of enterprises digital transformation decision-making from the perspective of innovation expectation gap, which helps to expand the research topics of the behavioral theory of the firm.