Organisational digitalisation

This chapter adopts an organisational perspective to analyse the digitalisation of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). Drawing on 60 firm-level empirical case studies conducted across seven Italian regions, it explores digital transition as a process embedded in institutional and organisational contexts. The analysis, based on a multilevel analytical framework, highlights the ambivalent nature of SMEs' digitalisation. At the macro level, firms' trajectories are strongly dependent on external actors who select, implement, and maintain digital solutions. While these actors exert isomorphic pressures and enable digitalisation by compensating for SMEs' limited internal competences, they simultaneously constrain organisational learning. At the organisational level, SMEs display a degree of inertia, as digitalisation has so far resulted in only limited transformation of structures, roles, and decision-making processes. Finally, at the micro level, the chapter identifies forms of resistance and key tensions between: automation and the increased workload associated with data entry; growing efficiency and heightened managerial control; and introduction of new technologies and impoverishment of job content. Overall, the analysis suggests that SME digitalisation unfolds through firm-specific trajectories shaped by institutional, organisational, and human factors, and follows non-linear and ambivalent paths, simultaneously enabling innovation and reproducing existing organisational constraints.