Survival in the Digital Era: A Digital Competence-Based Multi-Case Study in the Canadian SME Clothing Industry

Although the literature emphasizes the link between digital competence (DC) and IT adoption, there is a lack of understanding of how DC can be conceptualized in an SME context. Drawing on the literatures on SMEs and DC and on the change agentry perspective, this multi-case study proposes a multi-dimensional conceptualization of DC and empirically tests a typology of three DC archetypes of SME employees: Technical Expert, Organizer, and Campaigner. The results from a multi-case study of three Canadian SMEs suggest that the development of DC should focus on the complementarity nature of the technological, social and cognitive dimensions of the DC.