Deconstructing How Digital Transformation Affects Enterprise Cost Stickiness

Based on Data Support From Listed Manufacturing Companies

Abstract

Against the dual backdrop of the global digital wave and the upgrading of enterprise cost management, cost stickiness, as a core feature of dynamic adjustment of enterprise costs, is undergoing technological reconstruction and paradigm shift. Based on adjustment cost theory, agency theory and resource-based view, this article systematically deconstructs the four mechanisms by which digital transformation affects enterprise cost stickiness: technology empowerment reshapes cost structure, data-driven optimization of expectation management, organizational change alleviates agency problems, and ecological synergy softens transaction contracts. The study found that digital transformation, through the two-way effects of "rigid cost intelligence" and "elastic cost precision", can not only strengthen the technical specificity of fixed costs, but also significantly reduce adjustment costs and decision-making deviations, ultimately forming a differentiated sticky evolution path. Combining typical cases and practical difficulties, this article proposes a "technology-data-organization-ecology" collaborative optimization framework to provide theoretical support and action guidance for enterprises to solve the "transformation paradox" and build a flexible cost system.