Investigating Organizational Unlearning and Agility in Digital Transformation for improved Innovation Performance in an Emerging Economy: Moderating Roles of Digital Business Intensity and Firm Sizes

Despite the increasing prominence of embracing emerging digital technologies, the question of how firms gain success in digital transformation (DT) has become critical. This research intends to explore organizational unlearning and agility as prerequisites of DT for enhanced process and product innovation performance, with the moderating influences of digital business intensity and firm size. The PLS-SEM technique analyzes three-wave survey data collected from 596 Indian firms. Our findings imply that organizational unlearning and agility positively affect DT, leading to increased process and product innovation performance. Furthermore, digital business intensity is found to strengthen the positive effect of organizational agility on DT while weakening the positive effect of organizational unlearning on DT. Finally, the relationship between DT and product innovation performance is stronger for larger firms, whereas the relationship between DT and process innovation performance is stronger for smaller firms. Several insightful theoretical and practical implications are discovered from these findings, which can facilitate successful DT in the digital business era.