Digital Transformation and Sustainable Development for Private and Public Organizations: Barriers and Opportunities

Abstract

Two terms that have gained traction in the academia and policy making are Digital Transformation and Sustainable Development of public and private organizations. Digital transformation can be defined as the increasing application of digitization and automation that has important impacts on the structure of business ecosystems and their products and services. The core of Digital Transformation is the overall digitization and cross-linking of the value creation process. On the other hand, Sustainable Development has been defined as “the ability to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (Brundtland, et al., 1987).

As it can be observed, the two terms are defined in a vague way, however, their practical importance cannot be overstated. Despite the lack of a unified definition and methodological framework on how to define them, public and private organizations are making efforts to incorporate them in their practices.

Consequently, the purpose of the current paper is to map the opinions of employers, employees, policy makers, academics and students on what Digital Transformation and Sustainable Development mean for themselves and their organization. To achieve the objective of the paper, a survey was developed and disseminated across Europe. The questionnaire contained questions on the process of Digital Transformation and Sustainable Development themselves, what the respondents think of and fear about those two terms, what are barriers and finally what skills are missing that their organization faces in their effort to achieve Digital Transformation and Sustainable Development.

Initial results include the following: Missing skills by the employers and managers was considered the main internal barrier for achieving Digital Transformation and Sustainable Development on an organization.

Finally, a series of statistical tests is performed to examine the synergies between Digital Transformation and Sustainable Development. For example, we wanted to investigate whether the answer to the question of whether the organization has experienced difficulties in finding appropriate people to achieve Digital Transformation is independent of the answer to the same question for Sustainable Development.

The respondents that consider that their organization has difficulties in finding appropriate people for Digital Transformation are likely to answer that they face the same difficulty for Sustainable Development. Consequently, since there is an overlap between those skills, training people could offer a double advantage for any organization.