How Digital Orientation Promotes Technology Standard Innovation: The Serial Mediating Role of Organizational Unlearning and Knowledge Re-Orchestration

Against the backdrop of digital transformation, enterprises take digital orientation as a strategic foundation and compete for standard-setting authority to gain core competitive advantages. Although prior research indicates that digital orientation positively influences innovation, research on how digital orientation affects technology standard innovation remains limited. Technology standard innovation under digital practices is more complex and knowledge-intensive than that in the traditional industrial era. The mechanism by which digital orientation drives technology standard innovation requires more attention. Drawing upon strategic management theory and resource orchestration theory, this study proposes a serial mediation model to reveal how digital orientation influences technology standard innovation. We collected survey data from 480 Chinese enterprises via questionnaires and tested the model using partial least squares structural equation modeling. The results indicated that digital orientation has a significant positive impact on technology standard innovation; organizational unlearning and knowledge re-orchestration play a serial mediating role in this relationship; and knowledge inertia negatively moderates the relationship between organizational unlearning and knowledge re-orchestration. This study offers insights for traditional enterprises establishing efficient organizational change and knowledge management mechanisms to gain standard influence and innovation benefits.