Digital transformation has a profound impact on businesses and various implications for firms. While some effectively navigate this digital shift, harnessing the benefits of modern technologies, many small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) struggle to seize the opportunities presented by this transformative process, despite its unprecedented potential. Decision-makers within SMEs often grapple with uncertainty surrounding the digitalization process, leading to hesitancy in embracing available technologies. This qualitative study endeavors to address this challenge by exploring the enablers and barriers of digitalization adoption within SMEs, while also assessing its impact on performance. In-depth interviews were conducted with SME managers, with the results revealing that several factors simplify the process of digitization in SMEs, including the appropriate technologies, and a workforce equipped with the right digital skills to use them. Conversely, we identified elements that pose barriers to digitalization, such as the risk-averse culture prevalent in many SMEs, and their reliance on outdated legacy systems. In summary, our research underscores the importance of a strategic interplay of these elements for effective digitization within SMEs. This study sheds light on the intricacies of the digitalization process, while also providing valuable insights into the factors influencing its adoption and the resulting performance outcomes in the SME context.

Qualitative research has been flourishing in business and management research over the past decades. The insights gathered from rich qualitative data fundamentally depend on the analyzed subjects and case(s). Hence, highly substantial to qualitative research is how to achieve purposeful case selection and saturation of cases and informants. Our study reviews previous research on purposeful case selection and saturation. We specify that considering the level of analysis is particularly challenging in business and management research as cases are not typically individuals but rather aggregated individuals or collective entities, such as units, organizations, or types of organizations. Furthermore, informants and cases can provide coherent or differing information (‘harmony’ and ‘discord’) on different levels and across informants or cases so influencing purposeful selection and especially saturation. Our study zooms in on three qualitative approaches in business and management research: the so-called Gioia, the Eisenhardt, and the flexible pattern matching approach. We review how empirical studies following those approaches have explained the purposeful case selection and the saturation as well as what number of informants and cases they used. From these reviews, we deduct critical reflections, considerations, and guidelines about harmony and discord when including different informants and cases in the qualitative research process.