Digital technology (DT) has been widely adopted by firms to improve their innovation performance. However, few studies have explored the diversified adoption of DTs and the impacts of their various combinations on firms’ innovation from a holistic perspective. Hence, this study identifies three categories of digital technology adoption (DTA)—enhancing, adapting, and substituting—from the perspective of business model innovation and recognizes five adopting actions corresponding to the above categories. This study aims to explore the configurative effects of DTA on firms’ sustainable innovation performance (SIP). To study this, 94 cases of Chinese high-tech manufacturing firms are collected using both the interview and questionnaire methods. The data are analyzed using a coding method and then complemented with fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to understand how DTA can be combined to enhance firms’ SIP. The findings suggest that several reoccurring activity patterns may lead to high SIP. Among these patterns, enhancing always plays a crucial role. This study complements the previous research by shifting the focus from a single effect of DTA toward a more holistic view.

Mergers and acquisitions are important mechanisms for the growth of corporations, but up to now the evidence and explanations for good deals and bad deals are mixed. This study attempts to apply configuration theory to perceive and evaluate M&As holistically – that is, as a complex configuration of Timing, Environment, and People, an ideology that stems from ancient Chinese philosophers and has been spread in China for thousands of years. Overlooking the interdependent nature of the factors of Timing, Environment, and People in influencing M&As has limited our understanding of acquisition performance. Through examining the 80 largest cross-border M&A cases in Chinese listed companies by deal value between 2015 and 2018, relying on fuzzy-set methodology by using fsQCA, we investigate different configurations that lead to performance change; the result reveals two different configurations that equifinally result in post-merger performance growth, and three that decline. By constructing a typology of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ deals, we develop a mid-range theory of M&A performance change. Thus, the central contribution of this study is to help with the formation of a comprehensive understanding of M&As, and to offer novel managerial implications for practitioners.

Real options theory offers the dominant account of how firms choose ownership levels in cross-border acquisitions. It treats uncertainty as exogenous and prescribes caution: when uncertainty is high, firms should stage entry and take partial stakes. We challenge this passive view. We argue that firm-level digital capability is an endogenous mechanism of uncertainty resolution. It compresses the value of the deferral option and amplifies the value of the growth option, and it therefore moves acquirers toward full ownership. We also identify where this power ends. Digital capability governs technology-tractable uncertainty, such as market and competitive uncertainty, but it cannot resolve sovereign uncertainty that flows from the discretionary power of states. Using 715 cross-border acquisitions by 468 Chinese listed firms from 2007 to 2023, we find that digital capability raises the ownership sought. The effect is stronger when home-industry competition is intense and when target-country uncertainty is high, and it is weaker when bilateral relations are poor. The effect comes from real digital investment, not from digital rhetoric in disclosure. We recast real options as a theory of capability-conditioned commitment and delineate the limits of firm technological agency under geopolitical rivalry.