Corporate Growth Strategy and Digital Transformation: Conditions for Superior Performance

ABSTRACT Objective: this study aims to examine which combinations of corporate growth strategy and digital transformation produce superior performance. Theoretical approach: the research analyzed 1,422 documents such as annual and sustainability reports dated from 2011 to 2022, from the five largest banks in Brazil. Method: the research process found 420 blocks of evidence were identified regarding the types of corporate growth strategy (market penetration, product development, market development, and diversification) and the levels of digital transformation (digitization, digitalization, and digital transformation). AI tools were employed to validate and calibrate the data, setting up an innovative methodology for integrating content analysis (CA) and qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). Results: the results show that superior performance is produced only by the combination of growth strategies with digital transformation. Highlighting the combination of product development with digitization as central conditions for superior results. The scope of this theoretical contribution was only possible thanks to the adopted methodology combining the processing capacity of AI with traditional qualitative analysis methods. Conclusions: future studies can analyze configurations of corporate growth strategy with other relevant categories in the strategy field and can also add conditions such as time to the analysis. In methodological terms, both business strategy scholars and organizational studies scholars can benefit from the method presented here to strengthen the explanatory potential of qualitative research.