A study analyzing factors retarding digital transformation and configuration pathways: Based on the perspective of digital transformation acceptors

The high-touch service nature of the hospitality industry highlights that the success of digital transformation depends primarily on human factors rather than technology itself. Existing research indicates that approximately 80% of strategic initiatives fail due to employee resistance to change or capability deficits. Furthermore, nearly three-quarters of middle managers and staff exhibit resistance toward such transformations. This alarming trend raises a fundamental question: how can the hospitality industry navigate the inherent tension between high-touch emotional labor and digital depersonalization to transform employee resistance into proactive adoption? While traditional research frequently focuses on hotel management as change promoters, this study shifts the analytical focus to hotel employees as change recipients. Guided by cognitive appraisal and social information processing theories, within the context of hotel service scenarios, this research constructs models of resistance mitigation and antecedent condition linkages across individual, organizational, and managerial levels. Through an empirical analysis of 545 survey responses from various hotel categories and the application of fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), this study systematically explores the mechanisms of resistance alleviation and the synergistic effects of the identified influencing factors. Regression results indicate that digital literacy, digital strategy consensus, and perceptions of digital technology warmth and capability are negatively associated with hotel employee resistance to digital transformation. Additionally, organizational strategic flexibility and digital leadership positively moderate the relationships between these individual factors and resistance. The fsQCA results further identify two primary equifinal patterns sufficient for fostering a state of low resistance, demonstrating how strong digital leadership serves as a social cue that effectively compensates for the absence of organizational strategic flexibility. Ultimately, this research deepens the understanding of human-centered digital transformation in the hospitality sector and offers theoretical frameworks for managers to mitigate employee resistance to digital initiatives, thereby facilitating successful strategic implementation.