“Selective re-coupling”: digital capability configurations and financial resilience across stages of uncertainty

Digital transformation is often assumed to strengthen resilience in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), yet firms exposed to similar shocks show sharply different financial outcomes. We argue that financial resilience is associated less with digital investment alone than with selective re-coupling, the deliberate re-alignment of a relatively stable digital capability base with changing governance and liquidity conditions as uncertainty evolves. Using China’s policy-designated Specialized, Refined, Differentiated and Innovative firms, we examine stage-specific configurations across shock, recovery and deepening periods through necessary condition analysis and dynamic fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), with random forest as a predictive cross-check. No antecedent is universally necessary, yet feasibility constraints tighten as resilience targets rise. In the shock stage, lean and lightweight digital arrangements are associated with resilience, sometimes with temporary external buffering; in later stages, resilience is more strongly associated with combined agility and decision precision, alongside a governance-backed alternative. These findings position financial resilience as an evolving configurational outcome sustained through selective re-coupling rather than through the accumulation of digital investment.