Research on the Role Mechanism and Innovation Path of Enterprise Management Transformation in the Development of Digital Economy
Data publikacji: 17 mar 2025
Otrzymano: 07 paź 2024
Przyjęty: 04 lut 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/amns-2025-0334
Słowa kluczowe
© 2025 Wen Zhao, published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
In the era of digital economy, the business environment in which enterprises are located is increasingly complex, and the digital transformation of enterprise management has become an inevitable trend. Enterprises need to apply new technologies to optimize business processes, enhance the competitiveness of products and services, and seize opportunities and meet challenges by better adapting to market changes [1-2]. In terms of management style and energy efficiency, digital management is a kind of innovative management mode based on digital technology, which can promote the openness and open source of enterprise R&D, modularization and flexibilization of production, and precision and refinement of marketing, help enterprise decision makers to optimize the allocation of resources such as information flow, capital flow, logistics, etc., and effectively promote the effective landing of enterprise management culture [3-7]. In this sense, the success or failure of modern enterprise management is closely related to its own adaptive management capabilities.
In the era of digital economy, through management transformation, enterprises can understand the needs of customers more deeply and provide them with personalized products and services, thus enhancing their market competitiveness [8-9]. It can also introduce new technologies and thinking methods to better develop new products and services and create a new innovation-driven development model, thus realizing differentiated competition [10-11]. At the same time, through management transformation, enterprises can optimize the operation process and reduce the unnecessary links in it, thus reducing the operation cost [12-13]. The application of automation and intelligent technology helps enterprises to reduce labor costs, improve production efficiency, and realize cost reduction and efficiency [14-15].
The “adaptability” of enterprise management is the process of improving the adaptability of enterprises to the digital economy environment in adapting to the new concepts and new thinking of the digital system, as well as the process of optimizing and improving the behavioral characteristics of enterprises, which is a change with both risks and opportunities [16]. Literature [17] takes resource dependence as a research perspective and concludes that the development of regional digital economy will promote enterprise innovation, and the digital transformation of enterprises plays a positive mediating role in this process by changing enterprise efficiency. Literature [18] explores how digital transformation affects enterprise architecture (EA) that facilitates business transformation, pointing out that traditional EA is unable to sustainably adapt to changing business and technological environments, and thus proposes vertical enterprise architectures with organizational capabilities to help build flexible and resilient enterprises. Literature [19] analyzes the key organizational capabilities needed for MSMEs to achieve sustainability through digital transformation, including advanced organizational culture, stakeholder ownership, and corporate decision-making based on big data technologies, which will help companies attract customers and investors with sustainable values and give them a competitive advantage. Literature [20] re-examined the applicability of enterprise business process management (BPM) in the context of digital transformation and proposed an approach to BPM management based on new a priori logic and assumptions, which helps to demonstrate the contextual differences between digital transformation and technology support for enterprises. Literature [21] investigated technology management strategies for MSMEs in digital transformation, showing that effective technology management strategies can help enterprises automate business processes, reduce operational costs, and increase productivity and innovation, which is the key for MSMEs to complete digital transformation. Literature [22] explored the drivers of digital transformation of HRM in enterprises and emphasized that digital HRM based on advanced digital technologies for selection, training, development and evaluation will bring outstanding competitive advantages to enterprises, but there are potential negative impacts of the conversion process of HRMS. Literature [23] examined the relationship between supply chain relational capital, corporate green management and financial performance based on empirical data, and found that corporate supply chain relational capital in the period of digital transformation enhances financial performance by strengthening green management. Literature [24] investigated the customer knowledge management (CKM) strategies of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) and found that most SMEs engaged in creative industries are less likely to use cheap and easy-to-use innovative digital technologies due to the lack of support from information technology (IT) vendors, i.e., it is difficult to respond to the rapid technological changes that affect CKM.
This paper analyzes the promotion effect of digital economy on enterprise management transformation from both internal and external levels, and proposes research hypotheses based on the results of theoretical analysis combined with related research. The evaluation system for enterprise management transformation and digital economy levels has been constructed, and the entropy weight method has been used to quantitatively measure these two variables. A benchmark regression model is established to test the influence relationship between digital economy and enterprise management transformation, and the robustness of the benchmark regression results is verified through the robustness test methods such as the replacement variable method and lag period regression. The total enterprise performance improvement rate, government subsidies and analysts' attention are taken as mediating variables, and the explanatory variables are treated one period ahead to construct a mediation effect model to analyze the role mechanism of the digital economy affecting enterprise management transformation. The panel data of Chinese A-share listed enterprises from 2014-2023 are selected and input into the model, and the results of regression analysis are combined to propose innovative paths for enterprise management transformation from four perspectives, namely, strategic thinking, organizational structure, business processes and human resources. It provides ideas and inspiration for enterprises to realize their own digital transformation and enhance their market competitiveness in the context of the digital economy.
In recent years, the digital economy has not only revolutionized the way enterprises conduct business and establish relationships with consumers, suppliers and other stakeholders, but also played an active role in promoting business model innovation and customer value manufacturing [25]. The digital economy has likewise accelerated the transformation and upgrading of enterprise management, which has directly led to the digitization of transformation and the decentralization of organizational methods, the sustained and substantial reduction of management costs, the significant improvement of enterprise performance, the results of group, chain, and cross-domain outputs are common, and disruptive and revolutionary innovations parallel iterative and incremental innovations. Based on the existing research results, this paper argues that the digital economy has a positive impact on enterprise management transformation at both the internal and external levels of the enterprise.
At the internal level, the positive role of the digital economy in improving the overall performance rate of enterprises contributes to the transformation of business management. Specifically, the digital economy has the following effects on enterprise management transformation: first, expanding the knowledge base. Under the use of digital technology, the ability to collect and integrate data within the enterprise is increasing, and in the process of establishing various business plans, the integration and development is strengthened, so as to innovate and adjust the mode of enterprise services. Second, improve management's openness. The modern network environment is both complex and open-minded. Through the management process, the development of enterprise information is clear and the appropriate deployment of relevant information is used to achieve sustainable and healthy development of the enterprise. The use of advanced technology can make communication between various departments of the enterprise more convenient. Through the management platform, the enterprise can arrange for the corresponding personnel to upload the formulated work standards, improve the speed of information dissemination, and thus improve the management level. Third, promote process innovation. The effective application of digital technology in management can effectively break through the limitations between various management links to ensure the effective connection of the processes, so as to achieve the optimization of the content and shorten the time spent by enterprises in various activities.
At the external level, the digital economy enhances the management transformation of firms through access to government subsidies and increased market attention. Firstly, the digital economy helps enterprises obtain more government subsidies. In the process of promoting the digital economy and enterprise management transformation, the government has introduced a number of policies to support and encourage enterprises to carry out digital management transformation. With the support of these policies, enterprises carrying out digital management transformation can obtain more government subsidies and bank loans, thus widening the financing channel and alleviating financing constraints. And financing constraints are one of the main factors hindering the management transformation of enterprises. Therefore, from this point of view, enterprise digital management transformation can improve management output and efficiency by obtaining government subsidies to overcome the financing constraints faced by enterprise management transformation. Secondly, the digital economy can improve the market attention of enterprises. As a new production factor, data has an important impact on the upgrading of industrial structures and the transformation of economic growth mode. In this context, the transformation of enterprise management to digital will attract more attention and tracking from analysts and other capital market participants. It has been found that analysts' attention has a significant positive impact on enterprise management transformation. As an intermediary between managers, shareholders, and investors, analysts play an important role in alleviating corporate information asymmetry. If analysts are able to accurately convey corporate information and value to external investors and thus reduce the degree of information asymmetry, they not only help to resolve financing difficulties, but also inhibit managerial agency behavior, thus significantly contributing to corporate management transformation.
Based on the above analysis, this paper proposes:
H1: Digital economy can promote business management transformation.
H2: The digital economy contributes to business management transformation by increasing the total performance rate internally, obtaining government subsidies externally and increasing market attention.
Enterprise management transformation refers to the process in which an enterprise, in order to cope with changes in the internal and external environments, actively or passively carries out systematic changes and innovations in the enterprise's management concepts, management models, management methods, organizational structure, etc., so as to enhance the core competitiveness of the enterprise and achieve long-term stable development. This process is often accompanied by the synchronization of technological innovation, product upgrading, market expansion, talent strategy adjustment, and other aspects. Based on this, this paper constructs the evaluation index system of enterprise management transformation level from technology dimension, business dimension, management dimension and benefit dimension, and the results are shown in Table 1. Furthermore, the entropy power method is used to measure the level of transformation in enterprise management.
Enterprise management transformation evaluation system
| Primary indicator | Secondary indicator | Indicator description |
| Technical dimension | Hardware equipment | The Internet, intelligence, and operational capabilities of enterprise equipment |
| Software system | Deployment, application and integration of software systems | |
| Industrial data | Industry data acquisition, storage, analysis and management | |
| Digital platform | Industrial Internet platform construction and application level | |
| Information security | Information security system and technical level | |
| Business dimension | Platform design | The ability of R&D design to use digital technology |
| Intelligent manufacturing | The ability and efficiency of digital technology in production manufacturing | |
| Networked synergy | The ability of enterprise organizations to coordinate the industrial chain | |
| Personalized customization | Ability to meet the user's personalized needs | |
| Service extension | Ability to provide value-added services such as after-sales transportation and data analysis | |
| Management dimension | Strategy and language | Digital transition plan and the overall atmosphere of the enterprise |
| Organization and process | The application of digital technology and thinking of organization and process | |
| Digital talent | The cultivation and use of digital talents | |
| Benefit dimension | Economic benefit | The economic benefits of managing transition |
| Social benefit | The social benefits of management transformation |
The so-called digital economy is an information economic form that takes digital information as the core production factor in order to realize the intelligent development of industry, and it emphasizes digital industrialization and industrial digitalization development. Based on this, this paper refers to the existing research results, from the digital industrialization and industrial digitization dimension to construct the evaluation system of digital economy development, the results are shown in Table 2. The entropy weight method is further adopted to measure the level of development in the digital economy.
Digital economic development evaluation system
| Primary indicator | Secondary indicator | Tertiary indicator |
| Industry digitization | Industry digital transformation | The number of enterprise websites owned by every hundred |
| Expenditure on digital technology transformation for enterprises above designated size | ||
| Expenditure on digital technology introduction for enterprises above designated size | ||
| Industry digital trading | E-commerce business accounts | |
| The number of computers per hundred people | ||
| Enterprise e-commerce trading volume | ||
| Digital industrialization | Digital industrialization innovation | High technology enterprise number |
| High tech enterprise profit value | ||
| Main business income of high-tech enterprise | ||
| Digital industrialization service | Delivery volume | |
| Telecommunications quantity | ||
| Postal capacity | ||
| Fundamentals of digital industrialization | Information and information technology industry related enterprises | |
| The number of people in the information and information technology industry | ||
| Information and information technology industry related main business income |
This paper combines the results of existing literature to select control variables at the micro and macro levels. At the micro level, the management education level (
In order to test the relationship between the impact of digital economy and business management transformation, this paper constructs the following baseline estimation model:
where
This paper collects and integrates panel data from Chinese A-share listed enterprises for the research period 2014-2023. Among them, enterprise-related data are mostly taken from the China Statistical Yearbook, public annual reports of enterprises, CSMAR database, Wind database and CNRDS database. The rest of the variables are mainly obtained from the database of the National Bureau of Statistics, CEIC data, statistical bulletins of national economic and social development of each region, and the official websites of national and provincial statistical bureaus. Meanwhile, linear interpolation was used to fill in some missing data. The following treatments were carried out on the samples to improve the accuracy of the study: first, enterprises related to PT, *ST and ST categories were excluded. Second, listed companies with less than 5 years of development were excluded. Third, enterprises with serious missing core variables from 2014-2023 are excluded. In addition, the continuous variables are reduced-tailed based on the upper and lower 1%. The final sample size is 13,864.
Figure 1 shows the descriptive statistics of the main variables. The mean value of

Variable descriptive statistics
Figure 2 shows the correlation coefficients between the variables, in which the correlation coefficient between digital economy and enterprise management transformation is 0.179, which is significantly positive at the 1% level, and hypothesis 1 is preliminarily verified. In addition, the variance inflation factor between the variables is tested to be less than 4, and the mean value of the method inflation factor is 1.67, indicating that there is no serious multicollinearity problem between the variables.

Correlation analysis
In this paper, we use the fixed effect model for regression analysis [26], and Table 3 shows the baseline regression results. It can be found that the regression coefficient of digital economy (
Reference regression
| Variable | (1) | (2) |
| 0.6238*** | 0.6157*** | |
| ¥ | 3.0586*** | |
| ¥ | 0.5864*** | |
| ¥ | 1.7783 | |
| Pr |
¥ | -0.1638*** |
| ¥ | -0.0915*** | |
| ¥ | -0.1786 | |
| ¥ | 5.0657*** | |
| ¥ | 0.0586*** | |
| ¥ | 0.0794*** | |
| ¥ | 0.5258 | |
| Re |
¥ | -0.8364 |
| _cons | 7.7136*** | 7.0583*** |
| Enterprise fixation effect | Yes | Yes |
| Year fixed effect | No | Yes |
| R2 | 0.8023 | 0.7948 |
| Adjust R2 | 0.7986 | 0.7853 |
| Observed value | 13864 | 13864 |
In order to ensure the robustness of the regression results, this paper regresses the dummy variable of whether the company adopts effective management measures as a substitute variable for corporate management transformation. The regression results are shown in Panel A in Table 4. The regression coefficient of Explanatory Variable
Robustness test
| Variable | Panel A | Panel B |
| 0.5873*** | 0.5675*** | |
| Control variable | Yes | Yes |
| Enterprise fixation effect | Yes | Yes |
| Year fixed effect | Yes | Yes |
| R2 | 0.7936 | 0.7497 |
| Adjust R2 | 0.7843 | 0.7362 |
| Observed value | 13864 | 13864 |
Although this paper has taken the factors that may affect enterprise management transformation as control variables, there may still be some unobserved or uncontrolled factors. In order to avoid the problem of endogeneity, this paper has treated both explanatory variables and control variables in the regression with one period lag to test the effect of digital economy on enterprise management transformation, and the results are shown in Panel B in Table 4. The coefficient of digital economy (
In order to exclude the influence of many unobservable factors at the regional level over time on enterprise management transformation, this paper further adds the annual province interaction term
Control the changes in the provincial level
| Variable | Panel C |
| 0.5573*** | |
| 4.0786*** | |
| 0.3654*** | |
| 3.0127 | |
| Pr |
-0.1873*** |
| -0.0926*** | |
| -0.2176 | |
| 5.3478*** | |
| 0.0637*** | |
| 0.0782*** | |
| 0.5473 | |
| Re |
-8.9726 |
| _cons | 9.8374 |
| Yes | |
| Enterprise fixation effect | Yes |
| Year fixed effect | Yes |
| R2 | 0.7183 |
| Adjust R2 | 0.6972 |
| Observed value | 13864 |
With reference to related research, this paper constructs the following mediation effect model to test the role mechanism of digital economy in affecting enterprise management transformation:
Considering that there is a time lag from the investment in management transformation to the generation of transformation output and transformation efficiency, this paper treats the explanatory variables one period ahead.
The specific settings of the mediating variables are as follows: the total performance improvement rate (
Mechanism analysis
| Variable | (1) |
(2) |
(3) |
(4) |
(5) |
(6) |
| 0.037*** | 0.174*** | 0.009*** | 0.138*** | 0.483*** | 0.149*** | |
| ¥ | 0.142*** | ¥ | ¥ | ¥ | ¥ | |
| ¥ | ¥ | ¥ | 7.248*** | ¥ | ¥ | |
| ¥ | ¥ | ¥ | ¥ | ¥ | 0.037*** | |
| Control variable | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| _cons | 0.674*** | -5.728** | 0.008*** | -5.672** | -3.026** | -3.947** |
| Enterprise fixation effect | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Year fixed effect | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Sobel Z | ¥ | 1.928** | ¥ | 2.132** | ¥ | 4.107** |
| Adjust R2 | 0.364 | 0.168 | 0.172 | 0.293 | 0.286 | 0.179 |
| Observed value | 13864 | 13864 | 13864 | 13864 | 13864 | 13864 |
Against the backdrop of the current rapid expansion of the digital economy, corporate strategy needs to closely follow the trend of the times and commit itself to in-depth innovation in order to adapt to the rapid changes in the market. The innovation's main focus is on two strategic cores, the cross-border integration strategy and the ecosystem strategy, which together determine the competitiveness of enterprises in the new economic landscape. Based on this, enterprises need to actively build their own ecosystems and establish close cooperative relationships with other enterprises, organizations, and individuals to jointly promote ecological prosperity. This strategy requires enterprises to hold an open mind and share resources, knowledge, and technology in order to promote innovation and development.
In the face of rapid changes in the marketplace, companies must radically revamp their existing structures to create a competitive advantage in the digital age. This change is mainly reflected in the trend of organizational flattening and flexibilization, which complement each other to create a new look of enterprises adapting to the digital economy. Organizational flattening subverts the traditional hierarchical pyramid structure, under which information transfer is limited by complicated approval and transmission procedures, which is inefficient and prone to distortion and delay. In the digital era, the rapid evolution of the market requires companies to be able to react quickly and flexibly. The flat structure meets this need by streamlining the intermediate management level, facilitating the direct and rapid flow of information, and enhancing the efficiency of decision-making. In this way, enterprises can flexibly adjust their modular strategies and resource allocation according to market dynamics, resulting in efficient response and adjustment of the organization.
In the context of the development of the digital economy, the competition faced by enterprises has become particularly fierce, and the innovation of business processes is particularly important, which has become the core of enhancing the core competitiveness of enterprises. In this context, the use of digital and intelligent processes for enterprises to bring new opportunities to improve efficiency and reduce costs. In-depth discussion of the digital process, its connotation is far more than a simple conversion of paper documents to electronic documents, but a complete remodeling and upgrading of existing business processes. This change involves all aspects of business operations, such as order processing, inventory management, to financial control, customer service and other aspects, all need to experience digital transformation.
The human resources of an enterprise have been transformed into one of the key and precious assets, technological innovation, market expansion, service quality improvement, all of which depend on a team of talents with high quality and strong creativity. If enterprises want to break through in market competition, human resource innovation is crucial, especially in the recruitment and cultivation of talent, and in the reform of the incentive mechanism of the two core links. Based on this, companies need to tailor differentiated incentive programs to the characteristics and needs of their employees, including pay incentives, promotion opportunities, honorary recognition, and other ways. For example, provide higher pay and rewards for outstanding performance. For employees with hidden leadership talents, more promotion and training opportunities are offered. Honorary titles and medals are awarded to employees who have made significant contributions.
This paper focuses on analyzing the role mechanism of the impact of digital economy on enterprise management transformation by establishing a regression model, and proposes an innovative path for enterprise management transformation by combining the regression results.
The baseline regression coefficient for digital economy on enterprise management transformation is 0.6238, but with the addition of control variables, it drops to 0.6157, which is significant at 1% statistical level. It indicates that the development of the digital economy can significantly promote the level of enterprise management transformation. After replacing the explanatory variables, the regression coefficient of digital economy is 0.5873. After lagging the explanatory variables and control variables by one period, the regression coefficient of digital economy is 0.5675, and the coefficient of digital economy affecting the transformation of enterprise management after adding the interaction term of the yearly province is 0.5573. The robustness of the benchmark regression results is fully demonstrated by the significant positive regression coefficients obtained by the above treatments at the 1% level. The robustness of the baseline regression results is well illustrated. Meanwhile, the digital economy has a significant positive impact on the total performance improvement rate, government subsidies, and analysts' attention, and the regression coefficients are significantly positive at the 1% level. Under the transmission mechanism of mediating effect, the regression coefficients of digital economy on enterprise management transformation are significant 0.174, 0.138, and 0.149 respectively at 1% statistical level, which further illustrates the significant facilitating effect of digital economy on enterprise management transformation. In addition, the regression coefficients of the mediating variables on enterprise management transformation and the Sobel test results reveal that improving the total performance rate, obtaining government grants and analyst attention can serve as internal action paths for the digital economy to influence enterprise management transformation.
