Sustainable Business Model and Digital Transformation

Dear Colleagues,

The sustainable business model concept is hugely successful and highly common among practitioners. Still, a lack of consensus exists among scholars about how business models can evolve towards higher levels of sustainability and digitalization. A business model can be defined as the system of the boundary-spanning interactions of the organization that is key to the organization's revenue flows. Under selective pressures due to economic, ecological, technological, relational, and institutional phenomena, business models dynamically evolve through micro-adaptations and/or disruptive changes.  Usually, the digital transformation (DT) path can lead to disruptive changes. The Digital Transformation does not, therefore only concern the adoption of new technologies, but requires the implementation of a much wider change, which must involve numerous aspects relating to the structure and above all to the organizational culture. These changes impact on all businesses and industries. The most tangible changes concern: product customization, automatic control of production processes, the introduction of robots that support and gradually replace manual labor, the implementation of predictive models for decision making, a new concept of the relationship with the customer. In summary, the impact is significant on all company functions.

Hence, who governs the company has to transform their mindset and knowledge aimed at accepting even critically the changes induced by digitization.

For these reasons, digital transformation is understood as an organizational strategy whose objective is to create value on the entire value chain. Specific topics include, but are not limited to:

• Managerial and organizational implications of digitalization
• Digital transformation and sustainable business model innovation.
• New digital skills
• Digital transformation strategies
• Managing the digital transformation in Industry 4.0
• The role of the Chief Digital Officer

Prof. Cecilia Rossignoli
Prof. Francesca Ricciardi
Dr. Alessandro Zardini
Guest Editors

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