A Study of Antecedent Grouping for Digital Transformation of Food Companies

The digital transformation of food enterprises is a general trend, which will inject new vitality into the development of the industry. It is of great significance to discuss how food enterprises realize digital transformation. This paper tries to construct the Technology-Organization-Environment framework from the group perspective, applying Necessary condition analysis and Qualitative comparative analysis of fuzzy sets, to explore the multiple driving modes of food enterprise multiple driving modes of digital transformation in food enterprises. The results show that, firstly, a single condition does not constitute a necessary condition for high digital transformation of food enterprises, and there are seven paths leading to high digital transformation of food enterprises, which confirms the problem of “different paths leading to the same destination”. There is no single optimal path for food companies to achieve a high level of digital transformation. The driving paths show both differences in the coupling of factors and the equivalence of effects. Second, investment in digital technology has a universal role in enhancing the digital transformation of enterprises. It appears as a core condition in all seven different condition groupings, which highlights its central driving role in the process of firms undergoing digital transformation.