How digital transformation structure affects corporate innovation? the role of organizational inertia and top management team’s digital educational background

As digitalization has brought about a thorough technological paradigm revolution in manufacturing sectors, digital transformation (DT) is increasingly recognized as a hot issue. Focusing on DT’s structural dimension, this paper uses panel data of China’s A-share listed manufacturing spanning 2011 to 2023 and employs a two-way fixed-effect model to reveal a positive effect of digital transformation structure (DTS) on enterprise innovation performance. Interestingly, we also find that DTS enhances firm innovation by increasing organizational inertia. This finding challenges the traditional view, which regards organizational inertia as an obstacle to digitalization. Furthermore, the study concludes that the positive impact of DTS can be amplified by top management teams’ digital educational background. These insights make valuable contributions to the practice of digitalization in manufacturing companies and offer fresh perspectives for understanding organizational inertia and senior executives’ characteristics.