How Do Top Managers in Small-and-Medium-Sized Enterprises Form Opportunity Beliefs for Digital Transformation Strategy? An Attention-Based View

The engineering management (EM) literature has widely accepted that digital technologies provide new opportunities for small-and-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)’ growth. Identifying and acting upon opportunities requires top managers (TMs) to allocate and sustain their attention toward monitoring and interpreting signals from the external environment. However, present studies largely view TMs as invisible or perfectly rational, thus lacking sufficient investigation of their attention-based practices in SMEs’ digital transformation (DT). Drawing on the attention-based view (ABV), we examine how TMs in SMEs utilize attention engagement efforts to form opportunity beliefs for DT strategies. Specifically, we adopt a case study within a typical SME in China, which has transformed from a traditional manufacturer to a digital platform enterprise over the period of 2009–2025. The analyses are based on the fundamental logic of “noticed environmental changes―attention engagement efforts―opportunity belief” in ABV. With rigorous case study tactics for validity, reliability, and generalizability, we develop a framework with different aggregates of TMs’ attention engagement efforts in forming four opportunity beliefs successively for DT strategies (i.e., market development, market penetration, product development, and platform development). Overall, by investigating the role of TMs’ attention engagement efforts in DT, we contribute to the micro foundation of DT within the EM literature in the context of SMEs.