Strategic responses to digital disruption: lessons from online business education in Chile

Abstract

This paper provides a strategic and capability-based longitudinal analysis of the evolution of online undergraduate business education in Chile between 2012 and 2024. Rather than treating digital expansion as a purely technological shift, this study aims to examine how business schools have reconfigured organizational capabilities in response to digital disruption, particularly following the COVID-19 pandemic. This study adopts a qualitative longitudinal design combining documentary analysis with secondary data from Chile’s National Council of Education (CNED, 2024) and international literature. A Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) framework is applied and enhanced through UpSet diagrams to identify complex patterns of co-occurrence across strategic factors. These patterns are subsequently interpreted using a dynamic capabilities lens. The analysis reveals that flexibility, accessibility and student profile diversification constitute key strengths of online business education, while persistent weaknesses related to interaction, perceived quality and student retention reflect deeper organizational constraints. Interpreted through a capability-based framework, these patterns point to heterogeneous institutional abilities to sense, seize and transform digital opportunities. Building on this interpretation, this study identifies four alternative strategic pathways – hybrid premium differentiation, platform-enabled scale, regional access and inclusion and international niche positioning – each involving distinct trade-offs, risks and capability requirements. The analysis relies on secondary data and does not incorporate primary institutional case studies. Future research could extend this approach through mixed-method designs or comparative analyses to examine microlevel organizational processes underlying capability development. The findings inform academic leaders and policymakers by highlighting that successful digital transformation depends less on technology adoption per se than on strategic alignment, organizational capabilities and governance choices. By examining online business education as a strategic response to digital disruption, this study highlights its potential to expand access beyond major urban centers while cautioning against the risk of quality stratification in the absence of sustained capability development. This paper combines a visually enhanced SWOT methodology with a dynamic capabilities perspective to offer a foresight-oriented strategic analysis of online business education in an emerging market. It advances existing research by challenging the assumption that online expansion is equivalent to educational transformation and by shifting the focus from platform adoption to capability configuration, mechanism-based explanation and strategic pathway identification.