Chapter 9 The Value of Configurational Approaches for Studying Digital Business Strategy

This chapter shows how configurational approaches can be a valuable inquiring system for examining and understanding complex messy phenomena in the area of digital business strategy in turbulent environments such as digital ecodynamics. Digital ecodynamics is defined as the holistic confluence among environmental turbulence, dynamic capabilities, and IT systems – and their fused dynamic interactions unfolding as an ecosystem. With fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) we analyze firm-level field survey data and describe how IT systems, organizational dynamic capability and environmental turbulence simultaneously combine to result in multiple configurations, which have different causal structures to produce competitive firm performance. This equifinality shows how configurational approaches can create new practical insights in digital ecodynamics by suggesting multiple strategic options from which organizations can choose the best solution that fits their context.