A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR DIGITAL RESILIENCE: INVESTIGATING THE MEDIATING ROLE OF STRATEGIC DIGITAL ADOPTION AMONG CBT SMES IN SELANGOR
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35631/AIJBES.829084Keywords:
CBT SMEs, Digital Resilience, Selangor Tourism, Strategic Digital Adoption, TOE FrameworkAbstract
This conceptual paper aims to examine the main determinants of digital resilience among Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) involved in Community-Based Tourism (CBT) in Selangor, Malaysia. These micro-enterprises are important to regional socio-economic development but are quite sensitive to unexpected external shocks. The study establishes a framework that differentiates fundamental, transactional digital adoption from the longer-term capacity for sustained resilience. It proposes a structural model that draws on the Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) framework to identify technological readiness and environmental pressure as the two main antecedent conditions, and on Dynamic Capabilities Theory (DCT) to explain how these conditions are converted into adaptive capacity. Methodologically, it synthesizes extant literature to produce a series of research propositions positioning strategic digital adoption as the mediating mechanism that links these antecedents to digital resilience as the outcome construct. Conceptual analysis suggests that technological readiness and environmental pressure do not, in and of themselves, give rise to systemic resilience. Their contribution to resilience is expected to occur through strategic digital adoption, which involves operational integration, data governance and proactive business-model adaptation. The authors argue that ad-hoc adoption of technology only provides short-term operational survival, whereas strategic integration develops the dynamic capabilities needed to withstand macroeconomic shocks. Based on this, the framework identifies where tourism operators, policymakers and state organisations such as Tourism Selangor should focus targeted digital-intervention projects to sustain rural micro-economies in the long run.
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