Stories of Successful SME Digitalization in New Zealand: A Narrative Inquiry
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Tan, Denise SY
Tan, Felix B
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Informa UK Limited
Abstract
Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have persistently lagged in digitalizing compared to larger entities. The digitalization literature has paid little attention to the lived experiences of SMEs while going through digitalization. The purpose of this study is therefore to shed light on the journey of New Zealand SMEs through stories of their digitalization journey. The study employed narrative inquiry as the methodology to investigate how the SME owners make sense of their digitalization journey. It draws on Resource-Based View, Dynamic Capabilities, Social Cognitive Theory and the concept of Entrepreneurial Loneliness to explain the findings. Three SME owner-managers from manufacturing, retail and fitness sectors were interviewed. The study identified three key themes. Firstly, social isolation hinders digitalization efforts. Secondly, resilience and resourcefulness drive experimentation and continuous learning. Thirdly, a misalignment between institutional support and SME needs calls for targeted, tailored support to help bridge the SME digitalization gap.
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35 Commerce, Management, Tourism and Services, 3507 Strategy, Management and Organisational Behaviour, 9 Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, 1502 Banking, Finance and Investment, 1503 Business and Management, 1505 Marketing, 3506 Marketing, SME, digitalization, small business, digital transformation, narrative inquiry, McCracken’s long interview technique, resource-based view, dynamic capabilities, social cognitive theory, entrepreneurial loneliness
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Small Enterprise Research, ISSN: 1321-5906 (Print); 1175-0979 (Online), Informa UK Limited, 1-16. doi: 10.1080/13215906.2026.2719987
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© 2026 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 4.0