Employee Mindsets and Reconfiguration Capabilities: A Behavioral Study on Digital Transformation Readiness

Digital transformation (DT) is frequently theorized at the level of firm strategy and technology infrastructure, yet its enactment ultimately depends on the cognitive and behavioral dispositions of the employees who must translate strategic intent into reconfigured routines. Dynamic capabilities theory identifies “reconfiguration,” the purposeful redeployment and recombination of resources as the culminating stage of organizational renewal, but its microfoundations remain under-specified at the level of individual cognition. This paper addresses that gap by developing an integrative behavioral framework that links employee mindset orientation (growth versus fixed, following Dweck's implicit theories of ability) to individual-level contributions to organizational reconfiguration capability, and to digital transformation readiness as a proximal outcome. Drawing on dynamic capabilities theory, the microfoundations literature, the technology acceptance model, and organizational readiness-for-change theory, we articulate seven testable hypotheses connecting growth mindset, perceived usefulness and ease of use of digital tools, resistance to change, and change efficacy to an individual's willingness and capacity to participate in reconfiguration behaviors. Because no primary data collection has yet been undertaken, the paper does not report empirical results; instead, it specifies a rigorous, reproducible quantitative methodology — a cross-sectional survey analyzed through partial least squares structural equation modeling — and presents an illustrative, clearly labeled simulated evaluation to demonstrate how the proposed model would be tested and interpreted. The paper contributes a theoretically grounded, psychometrically specified conceptual model that repositions employee mindset as a measurable microfoundation of dynamic capability, offers practitioners a diagnostic lens for sequencing change-management interventions, and proposes a concrete empirical agenda — including measurement instruments, sampling strategy, and robustness checks — for future confirmatory research in digitally transforming organizations.