Digital Transformation in SMEs: A Systematic Review and Future Directions

In the nowadays global economy, digital transformation is leading companies of all sizes to rethink their products, processes, and business models to meet changing society requirements. In this regard, research on digital transformation has gained great research interest from both scholars and practitioners. However, to date, most of the research has been focused on studying such changes within the boundaries of large companies or high-tech start-ups. Thus, this paper is motivated by the necessity of providing a more profound understanding of the interplays existing between digital transformation processes in the context of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). To do so, a two-step structured literature review was conducted with the aim of systematizing and synthetizing current research on the topic and provide an avenue to drive future research. To do so, articles indexed in the timespan 2010-2019 on Scopus were submitted to bibliometric analysis, allowing us to synthesize and systematize current knowledge on the topic. Then, the articles published in journals ranked 2 or higher in the AJG2018 were selected for a content analysis. Interestingly, three major research streams emerged: (1) innovation, (2) information and knowledge management systems, and (3) decision making. Moreover, avenues for orienting future research agenda could be identified. These results highlighted the partial conceptualization of the phenomenon and were used as useful baseline to provide some insights about future research needs.