Beyond the Lockdown: Digital Transformation and Sustainable Development in Business and Society

Dear Colleagues,

The recent emergence of COVID-19 has enhanced the centrality of digital technologies in daily life and emphasized the need to rethink the competitive strategies and organizational settings in business and society. In the meantime, the sentiment of vulnerability that has accompanied the lockdown imposed in various countries worldwide has highlighted the need for radical change in the traditional production, distribution, and consumption systems, which are being called to shift toward more sustainable models to survive and return to being competitive. At the intersection of these topics, several areas for deeper understanding can be identified by scholars and researchers in the field of business management, technology management, and sustainability.

Indeed, although digital transformation is arising as a pervasive process which is of interest to most industries and is causing a radical reconfiguration of firms’ organizational and strategic models [4,7,8,9], the meaning and implications of this process from a sustainability perspective is still under-considered. In the same vein, while the debate on digital transformation has recently focused on dynamics and patterns of change in SMEs and big corporations [3–5], the question of how digital technologies can support companies, small–medium and big, in the transition towards a sustainable business model configuration or to achieve sustainable development goals is still poorly investigated.

That is not the only under-investigated area, either. While interest among scholars and researchers in the field of sustainability in business has increased, nurtured by several studies related to the circular economy business model [3], there has been little consideration of the role that digital technologies can have in the transition of businesses toward a more sustainable configuration [1,6]. 

Framed in these premises, this Special Issue aims to provide contributions that allow a larger comprehension of how digital technologies and sustainability can support business and society in the current phase of re-start. This suggests the need for new analytical and conceptual frameworks grounded in cross-disciplinary theoretical perspectives and resulting from the integration of consolidated and emerging theories and approaches in the fields of business management, IT management, and sustainability. Thus, we encourage papers that examine novel phenomena, employ original methodologies, and offer interesting theoretical and empirical contributions to this research.

Indeed, topics welcome in this Special Issue include (but are not limited to):

• Digital technologies for a sustainable restart;
• Digital transformation and sustainability after the lockdown;
• Impact of digital transformation in SMEs and big corporations;
• Sustainable business models in the digital landscape;
• New organizational models and smart working;
• Digital transformation enabling sustainable open innovation;
• Digital technologies for sustainable human resource management;
• Digital technologies for knowledge management;
• Digital technologies and circular economy business models;
• Digital transformation and environmental sustainability;
• Digital and sustainable knowledge society.

Main References

[1] Brenner, B. (2018). Transformative Sustainable Business Models in the Light of the Digital Imperative—A Global Business Economics Perspective. Sustainability, 10(12), 4428.

[2] Centobelli, P., Cerchione, R., Chiaroni, D., Del Vecchio, P., & Urbinati, A. (2020). Designing business models in circular economy: A systematic literature review and research agenda. Business Strategy and the Environment, 29(4), 1734-1749.

[3] Centobelli, P., Cerchione, R., & Esposito, E. (2020). Pursuing supply chain sustainable development goals through the adoption of green practices and enabling technologies: A cross-country analysis of LSPs. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 153, 119920.

[4] Garzoni, A., De Turi, I., Secundo, G., & Del Vecchio, P. (2020). Fostering digital transformation of SMEs: a four levels approach. Management Decision.

[5] Li, L., Su, F., Zhang, W., & Mao, J. Y. (2018). Digital transformation by SME entrepreneurs: A capability perspective. Information Systems Journal, 28(6), 1129-1157.

[6] Piscicelli, L., Ludden, G. D., & Cooper, T. (2018). What makes a sustainable business model successful? An empirical comparison of two peer-to-peer goods-sharing platforms. Journal of cleaner production, 172, 4580-4591.

[7] Rippa, P., & Secundo, G. (2019). Digital academic entrepreneurship: The potential of digital technologies on academic entrepreneurship. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 146, 900-911.

[8] Savastano, M., Amendola, C., Bellini, F., & D’Ascenzo, F. (2019). Contextual impacts on industrial processes brought by the digital transformation of manufacturing: a systematic review. Sustainability, 11(3), 891.

[9] Urbinati, A., Chiaroni, D., Chiesa, V., & Frattini, F. (2018). The role of digital technologies in open innovation processes: an exploratory multiple case study analysis. R&D Management.

Prof. Dr. Pasquale Del Vecchio
Prof. Dr. Piera Centobelli
Prof. Dr. Roberto Cerchione
Prof. Dr. Giustina Secundo
Guest Editors

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• digital transformation
• digital technologies
• sustainability
• restart
• lockdown
• sustainable business models
• SMEs
• big corporations