Research Problem

The problem

Digital transformation training for small and medium manufacturers is a substantial public investment, and the TOE framework is the standard lens for explaining why some firms convert such investment into capability and others do not. Applied conventionally — as three independent additive predictors — TOE has produced an extensive body of adoption research. It has produced much less that explains training effectiveness, and where the additive specification returns nothing, the usual inference is that the context variables do not matter here.

That inference confuses the framework with the model. TOE names three dimensions; it does not require them to combine additively. If the true relationship is one of correspondence between dimensions rather than accumulation across them, an additive model is correctly specified to find nothing, and finding nothing tells us about the estimator rather than the phenomenon.

The gap

The literature contains each necessary component separately:

• TOE applied to digital transformation in SMEs
• P-E Fit congruence theory with an established polynomial operationalization
• Response surface methodology as an accepted tool in management and information systems research
• Studies of DT training effectiveness in manufacturing firms

What it does not contain is their intersection. No prior study combines the TOE framework, a P-E Fit congruence operationalization, and second-order response surface analysis to explain DT training effectiveness in manufacturing SMEs. The gap is specific and structural rather than a matter of insufficient coverage.

The claim under test

That Technology–Environment congruence, not Technology or Environment level, is the operative mechanism — and that a framework which appears inapplicable under linear specification becomes informative under a congruence specification.

What would falsify it

A response surface that shows no curvature penalty for misfit would leave the linear null standing as a substantive result rather than a specification artefact. Equally, if the finding holds only for a self-report outcome and disappears under an objective one, the result is a common-method artefact rather than evidence for congruence. The second of these is an open question in this study rather than a hypothetical — see Questions and Answers.