PhD defence M.T. (Mohammad) Ramezan Zadeh

Digital-driven technological innovations are revolutionizing our world. They provide business opportunities and, at the same time, face incumbent firms with various threats. Such firms have to cope with digital innovations to survive. Coming to grips with these innovations can be problematic, even for historically successful incumbent firms. For instance, we know insufficiently about how managers of different organizational hierarchical levels proactively play a part in the incumbents’ adaptation in the digital time. Contributing to the literature on the incumbents’ adaptation, I present three studies of the firms’ strategy and organization in developing and adopting digital technological innovations in this dissertation. In the studies, I answer questions about organizational capabilities, managers’ cognition (i.e., attention and identity), and how they (jointly) influence the firms’ adaptation.

In this dissertation’s research, new models that take into account managers’ agency in incumbents’ adaptation are developed and tested and the boundary conditions of the current theories (e.g., path dependent capabilities and institutional view) in the digital era are identified. The results are discussed, and consequently, recommendations are provided for practice. Avenues for future research are also suggested.

The PhD defences do not take place publicly in the usual way in the Senate Hall at campus Woudestein or in the Professor Andries Querido Room at the Erasmus MC. The candidates will defend their dissertation either in a small group or online.