Digital Transformation, New Business Models and Sustainability

Dear Colleagues,

Focus:

This Special Issue examines how digital transformation reconfigures business models in ways that either advance or undermine sustainability outcomes. Digital transformation is now well theorized as a process in which digital technologies trigger strategic responses that alter organizational value-creation paths (Vial, 2019; Hanelt, Bohnsack, Marz, & Antunes Marante, 2021), and sustainable business models are equally well typologized (Bocken, Short, Rana, & Evans, 2014). What remains underspecified is the mechanism connecting the two. The Industry 5.0 agenda makes this gap concrete: a systematic review of the field identifies human centricity, resilience, and sustainability as its three core themes, yet finds the literature fragmented, definitionally unsettled, and notably short of theory-driven work (Ali, Nguyen, & Oh, 2025).

Scope:

We invite firm-, network-, and ecosystem-level studies across manufacturing, platform, financial, and creative-industry settings, using quantitative, qualitative, mixed, or simulation-based methods—the last three being precisely where Ali, Nguyen, and Oh (2025) locate the sharpest methodological shortfall. We particularly encourage evidence from Asia-Pacific and emerging economies, where the relationship between sustainability investment, corporate performance, and economic development differs systematically from North American patterns (Kim & Lee, 2018), and where digital financial infrastructure yields the largest inclusion gains in the least developed contexts (Yoon, Lee, & Oh, 2023).

Purpose:

The Issue interrogates rather than assumes the proposition that digitalization is sustainability-enhancing and seeks to specify the organizational, institutional, and governance conditions under which digital business models deliver measurable gains.

Relations to existing literature:

Research on digital transformation and research on sustainable business models have developed largely in parallel, each treating the other as background. The emergent “digital sustainability” literature has begun to bridge them (George, Merrill, & Schillebeeckx, 2021; George & Schillebeeckx, 2022), and systematic reviews confirm the convergence is recent and uneven (Guandalini, 2022). This Issue supplements that work in three ways: by theorizing the interaction mechanism rather than documenting correlation; by centering non-Western empirical contexts; and by taking seriously the trade-offs optimistic accounts omit: the energy intensity of AI and data infrastructure, algorithmic labor precarity, digital divides, and rebound effects.

Contribution to sustainability:

The current reporting standards carry serious implementation problems (Yoon, Oh, & Kim, 2024). Digital tools reshape what can be measured, verified, and governed—which is where this Issue expects its sustainability contribution to lie. This Issue builds directly on two widely cited contributions to Sustainability. Feroz, Zo, and Chiravuri (2021) mapped digital transformation onto environmental sustainability across pollution control, waste management, sustainable production, and urban sustainability, closing with a call for work on the organizational capabilities that convert digital investment into environmental performance. Bican and Brem (2020) disentangled the conceptual vocabulary—digital business model, digital transformation, digital entrepreneurship—and proposed a framework linking digital readiness and technology to innovation outcomes. Both establish the terrain; neither adjudicates when digitalization delivers sustainability gains and when it does not. That adjudication is what this Issue seeks. Accordingly, papers will be evaluated on whether they identify actionable levers—measurement, governance, supply-chain design, policy—through which digital business models produce verifiable progress on decarbonization, resource efficiency, and inclusive participation.

References

Ali, I., Nguyen, K., & Oh, I. (2025). Systematic literature review on Industry 5.0: Current status and future research directions with insights for the Asia Pacific countries. Asia Pacific Business Review, 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/13602381.2025.2452877

Bican, P. M., & Brem, A. (2020). Digital business model, digital transformation, digital entrepreneurship: Is there a sustainable “digital”? Sustainability, 12(13), 5239. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12135239

Bocken, N. M. P., Short, S. W., Rana, P., & Evans, S. (2014). A literature and practice review to develop sustainable business model archetypes. Journal of Cleaner Production, 65, 42–56.

Feroz, A. K., Zo, H., & Chiravuri, A. (2021). Digital transformation and environmental sustainability: A review and research agenda. Sustainability, 13(3), 1530. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13031530

George, G., Merrill, R. K., & Schillebeeckx, S. J. D. (2021). Digital sustainability and entrepreneurship: How digital innovations are helping tackle climate change and sustainable development. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 45(5), 999–1027.

George, G., & Schillebeeckx, S. J. D. (2022). Digital transformation, sustainability, and purpose in the multinational enterprise. Journal of World Business, 57(3), 101326.

Guandalini, I. (2022). Sustainability through digital transformation: A systematic literature review for research guidance. Journal of Business Research, 148, 456–471.

Hanelt, A., Bohnsack, R., Marz, D., & Antunes Marante, C. (2021). A systematic review of the literature on digital transformation: Insights and implications for strategy and organizational change. Journal of Management Studies, 58, 1159–1197.

Kim, K., & Lee, S.-M. (2018). Does sustainability affect corporate performance and economic development? Evidence from the Asia-Pacific region and North America. Sustainability, 10(4), 909.

Vial, G. (2019). Understanding digital transformation: A review and a research agenda. The Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 28(2), 118–144.

Yoon, S. S., Lee, H., & Oh, I. (2023). Differential impact of fintech and GDP on bank performance: Global evidence. Journal of Risk and Financial Management, 16(7), 304.

Yoon, S. S., Oh, I., & Kim, H. J. (2024). An accounting perspective on the IFRS sustainability reporting standards for greenhouse gas emissions: Implications for the Asia Pacific. Asia Pacific Business Review. https://doi.org/10.1080/13602381.2024.2364806

Prof. Dr. Ingyu Oh
Prof. Dr. Sang-Myung Lee
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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