arbiter
JournalsAccount

Shifting Representations: Understanding How CEO Cognitive Flexibility Fosters Digital Product Innovation in Incumbent Firms

Qilong Zong et al.

Management and Organization Review2026https://doi.org/10.1017/mor.2025.10116article
AJG 3ABDC A
Weight
0.50

Abstract

While digital product innovation offers unprecedented opportunities for incumbent firms to create competitive advantages, its fluid and iterative nature presents distinctive cognitive challenges. There is limited empirical literature explaining the role of constructive cognitive characteristics of executives in differentiating the successful pursuit of digital product innovation. Drawing on upper echelons theory and the attention-based view, we examine how chief executive officer (CEO) cognitive flexibility enables incumbent firms to pursue digital product innovation. Through a mixed-methods approach combining a field survey of 178 machine-building firms and a scenario-based experiment with 134 participants, we demonstrate that CEOs with higher cognitive flexibility achieve superior digital product innovation outcomes by facilitating insightful information acquisition and processing. This relationship is strengthened when CEOs engage in more boundary spanning activities and when firms possess greater social capital. Our study contributes to strategic leadership research by demonstrating how CEO cognitive flexibility enables incumbent firms to navigate the cognitive demands of digital product innovation, while enriching our understanding of how adaptive attention patterns shape strategic adaptation in increasingly digitized environments.

Open via your library →

Cite this paper

https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1017/mor.2025.10116

Or copy a formatted citation

@article{qilong2026,
  title        = {{Shifting Representations: Understanding How CEO Cognitive Flexibility Fosters Digital Product Innovation in Incumbent Firms}},
  author       = {Qilong Zong et al.},
  journal      = {Management and Organization Review},
  year         = {2026},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1017/mor.2025.10116},
}

Paste directly into BibTeX, Zotero, or your reference manager.

Flag this paper

Shifting Representations: Understanding How CEO Cognitive Flexibility Fosters Digital Product Innovation in Incumbent Firms

Flags are reviewed by the Arbiter methodology team within 5 business days.

Evidence weight

0.50

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20
M · momentum0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.