Strategic Portfolio Reconfiguration under Digital Transformation: A Qualitative Case Study of a Diversified State-Owned Enterprise in Vietnam

Abstract

Digital transformation affects not only operations and business models but also how diversified firms evaluate, prioritize, and govern their corporate portfolios. Yet this portfolio-level role remains underexplored in state-owned enterprises (SOEs), where commercial goals coexist with public mandates, regulatory constraints, and capital-preservation requirements. This study examines the drivers, mechanisms, and priorities of strategic portfolio reconfiguration in a diversified Vietnamese SOE, anonymized as Company T. A qualitative single-case design combines ten semi-structured interviews, internal documents, operational and financial data for 2023–2025, and structured portfolio assessments. The findings show that reconfiguration is driven by uneven business performance, dispersed resources, prolonged projects, fragmented information, technological change, and growing accountability requirements. Digital transformation supports reconfiguration through four mechanisms: data visibility, cross-unit comparability, resource coordination, and strategic control. The proposed target configuration comprises five differentiated roles: core growth, selective capability development, efficiency and cash generation, conditional asset development, and restructuring or exit, supported by a shared digital governance platform. Digital technologies, however, create portfolio-level value only when linked to decision rights, managerial accountability, risk governance, and disciplined resource allocation. The study extends digital transformation research to the corporate portfolio level and interprets portfolio reconfiguration as a digitally enabled dynamic capability under hybrid organizational objectives.