An adapted model for measuring digital maturity in MSMEs from emerging regions

Micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises play a central role in employment, local development, and economic resilience in emerging economies, yet their digital transformation is often constrained by limited resources, informal processes, uneven digital skills, and restricted access to advanced technologies. Existing digital maturity models provide useful assessment frameworks, but many were designed for larger firms and assume levels of infrastructure, governance, and technical specialization that are rarely available in smaller enterprises. This study develops and validates a novel digital maturity index for micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises, a context-sensitive instrument designed to assess digital maturity through accessible and capability-based criteria. The instrument was derived from existing maturity frameworks, refined through expert evaluation and pilot testing, and empirically validated with data from 260 firms in Norte de Santander, Colombia, using a stratified split-sample procedure for exploratory and confirmatory analyses. The results support a multidimensional and hierarchical interpretation of digital maturity, showing that the proposed structure better represents the data than a unidimensional model. The empirical application revealed that most firms were concentrated in intermediate maturity levels, with relatively higher mean scores in leadership and strategy and comparatively lower mean scores in process optimization. However, the differences among the six dimension scores were not statistically significant. By conceptualizing digital maturity as an integrated organizational capability rather than as a purely technological condition, this study contributes to research on digital transformation in smaller enterprises and emerging regions. The proposed index offers a decision-support tool to guide feasible, inclusive, and context-sensitive digital transformation strategies.