The digital transformation is not only leading to technological progress in everyday life and society, but is also changing the world of work. Digital technologies are increasingly influencing work processes and organization. This means that (vocational) schools are also confronted with the need to integrate digital technologies into school lessons in order to prepare learners for a digitalized world of work. In this context, schools usually act under uncertainty, as teachers often lack the essential skills, will or tools for pedagogically meaningful and authentic digitally supported teaching (Knezek & Christensen 2016).

The integration of digital technologies into the classroom is associated with changes at the administrative, organizational and cultural level of the school (Blau & Shamir-Inbal 2017; Pettersson 2018). Rather, digitalization in the school context means a fundamental change (Islam & Grönlund 2016). Digital technologies in education can be seen as an innovation, which entails a school innovation process when implemented in the classroom (Rogers 2003). This process takes place in the context of school development, which occurs in various dimensions (Eickelmann & Gerick 2017; Ilomäki & Lakkala 2018), which can be seen as an indication of a successful innovation process. The successful implementation of digital technologies in the classroom therefore requires a holistic innovation process in which, in addition to pedagogical adaptations, extensive changes are required in the school organization, particularly at an organizational and structural level.

The innovation process affects, for example, the design of structural and procedural areas of the school organization. Both hindering and facilitating factors play a decisive role at the school meso level, which can lead to school development succeeding or failing. Barriers to innovation can therefore occur in the change process (Reiß 1997), which can manifest themselves, for example, in a lack of digital skills among teachers or in a lack of IT equipment in schools (Fraillon et al. 2020). Barriers to innovation can change, delay or even prevent the implementation of innovation (Mirow 2010). The promoters in an organization play a decisive role in overcoming innovation barriers (Witte 1973). These are actors in the organization who intensively push the innovation process and want to successfully implement the innovation with personal commitment. The focus is on the promoter's contributions to innovation (e.g. training of colleagues) based on their sources of influence (e.g. expert knowledge). There are four different types of promoter: Expert promoter, power promoter, process promoter and relationship promoter. The success of an innovation process therefore depends on the conditional configuration of hindering innovation barriers and conducive promotional activities. Complex causal structures can be assumed. A successful school development process is influenced by several different conditions, which themselves are interconnected.

The aim of the study is to analyse which constellations of innovation barriers and promotional activities as conditions lead to (un)successful school development when implementing digital technologies in schools. In this way, the causal complexity of the innovation process should be considered. The research question to be addressed is which combinations of conditions in the implementation of digital technologies in schools lead to (not) successful school development?

This causal complexity is explored using fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA). This causal method aims to clarify which constellations of conditions cause a certain outcome (Ragin 2009; Schneider & Wagemann 2012). The aim is to describe the complexity of school innovation processes in the implementation of digital technologies in schools using innovation barriers and promotion activities as conditions to derive insights for the design of school innovation processes using fsQCA. It can be assumed that different combinations of the conditions lead to an (un)successful implementation of digital technologies in schools, but that common patterns can be identified in successful and unsuccessful schools. From a methodological point of view, the aim is to identify necessary and sufficient conditions for (not) successful school development. For this purpose, an interview study was conducted at vocational schools in a federal state in Germany (n=16) that took part in a project to promote the use of tablets in the classroom. School leaders, IT administrators and department heads were interviewed at the schools. The aim of the interviews was to examine the organizational design of tablet use at vocational schools and the associated innovation process in the implementation of tablets. Based on the categories and text passages generated using qualitative content analysis (Kuckartz 2018), the interview data was calibrated using Generic Membership Evaluation Templates according to Tóth, Henneberg & Naudé (2017) and then necessary and sufficient conditions were identified using fsQCA. Based on theoretical and empirical assumptions, it can be assumed that the presence of promoters and the absence of innovation barriers are essential for successful school development and, vice versa, relevant for unsuccessful school development.

The fsQCA has identified the existence of promotional activities of expert, power and process promoter as necessary conditions for successful school development for the implementation of digital technologies. With regard to sufficient conditions in successful school innovation processes, the fsQCA has identified two solutions. These are configurations consisting of promotion activities of the expert and power promoter paired with a process or relationship promoter. The efficiency of such troika structures has already been empirically confirmed several times (Hauschildt & Kirchmann 2001). Against all expectations, missing innovation barriers are not part of the sufficient configurations of conditions for the successful implementation of digital technologies in schools and have thus proven to be irrelevant for successful school development processes. Rather, promotional activities appear to play a prominent role in the school digitization process (Prasse 2012; Wagner & Gerholz 2022). The prominent role of the expert promoter can be confirmed here (Chakrabarti & Hauschildt 1989), as this is not only necessary for the success of the innovation process, but was also identified as sufficient on its own. No necessary conditions could be identified for unsuccessful innovation processes. However, two configurations of conditions were found to be sufficient for unsuccessful innovation processes, which are relatively complex. The result follows theoretical assumptions and empirical findings that innovation barriers have a negative influence on the innovation process (Mirow 2010; Reiß 1997; Witte 1973) and that innovation processes without promotional activities do not lead to success (Prasse 2012). The results of the fsQCA reveal the high causal relevance of promotion activities. It is therefore about the commitment of school actors in the innovation process. This needs to be promoted in a systematic way.

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