Navigating digital transformation for not-for-profits: exploring resource fluidity under access-based conditions

Digital transformation (DT) is a pervasive phenomenon with substantial impact across organizational and societal levels, yet current scholarship largely centers on for-profit contexts where resource ownership is implicitly assumed. This leaves a critical gap in understanding how not-for-profit (NFP) organizations with critical societal impact, which are characterized by resource dependence, heightened accountability, and mission-driven goals, navigate DT. Drawing on a grounded qualitative case study of a large faith-based NFP in New Zealand, this study develops the concept of resource fluidity, an organizational capability to flexibly access, recombine, and redeploy non-owned resources across tasks and time with minimal friction. Resource fluidity unfolds through a three-phase process: (1) Identification of resources with polymorphic potential, (2) Activation through envisioning, redeployment, and experimentation capabilities, and (3) Application guided by mission-driven governance. This study contributes to DT research by shifting the focus from proprietary resource to flexible access-based arrangements and offers a contextualized understanding of how NFP organizations can enact cost-effective and mission-aligned DT under resource constraints.