Adoption of digital strategy: the role of the top management team

Emerging market financial institutions, in common with companies across the world, are grappling with how to adopt digital strategy and thereby facilitate the transfer of emerging digital technologies into their operations. In line with upper echelon theory predictions, evidence is emerging that, as is the case for technology adoption in general, top management teams (TMTs) are decisive in digital strategy adoption. However, less is known about which specific members of the TMT are primarily responsible for digital strategy adoption decisions, what their role is in these adoption processes, and which executive characteristics are conducive to adopting digital strategy. We conducted semi-structured interviews with key informants who were knowledgeable about the financial sector in emerging economies, an area which has recently seen a sharp increase in digital strategy adoption. We find that the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) is viewed as the primary initiator of digital strategy adoption. In our interviewees’ experience, CEOs play the role of idea generator, advocate and decision-maker, whereas other parties either stimulate or restrict the CEOs’ role. In addition, IT knowledge, specialist as well as overseas education and experience, digital training and mindset are identified as strong influences on the adoption of digital strategy. These results imply that companies seeking to more rapidly adopt digital strategy should seek to appoint CEOs who possess this mix of CEO characteristics whilst policy makers can support such moves by incentivizing both overseas education of executives as well as the return of diaspora talent back to the home financial sector.