All roads lead to Rome, but with different impact: the configuration of driving firm’s artificial intelligence innovation and its impact on organisational resilience

Corporate artificial intelligence innovation (AII) is a core driver of organisational transformation and sustainable competitive advantage in the digital-intelligence era. However, in a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) environment, how firms achieve AII and how such innovation pathways affect organisational resilience (OR) remain underexplored. Using data from Chinese listed companies, this study adopts a configurational perspective based on the TOE (Technology-Organisation-Environment) framework. We apply fsQCA with PSM to examine the formation of AII and its impact on OR. This study yields three findings. First, AI stock constitutes a necessary condition. Second, there are three configurational pathways: balance-oriented, focus-oriented, and ecosystem-enabled. Third, these pathways have different effects on OR: the focus-oriented and ecosystem-enabled pathways strengthen OR, the balance-oriented pathway does not. This study extends research on the antecedents of AII through a configurational lens and offers a new perspective for reconciling debates on the relationship between digital innovation and OR.