SUSTAINABILITY, DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES AND FIRM’S PERFORMANCE: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS

Abstract

The progressive spread of technological innovation has led to a radical transformation of corporate business models. The phenomenon known as the fourth industrial revolution through the application of digital innovations to processes, products and resources has improved the efficiency of business processes. Among the advantages related to the adoption of new technologies there is also the improvement of corporate sustainability, ensuring savings in time, costs and reduction of errors. The digitalization of processes therefore represents the tool through which to ensure not only the improvement of economic, financial and equity performance, but also of corporate sustainability. This paper intends to investigate the relationship between sustainability, technological innovation and firm’s performance, trying to understand if companies more oriented towards sustainability are also the most innovative and the best performing. To test the relationship, we intend to estimate a regression model for the panel data considering a time horizon of 5 years with reference to a sample of listed companies operating in the public services sector in Europe and the United States. Since digitalization favors the cost-effectiveness and sustainability of corporate performance, we believe that the most innovative companies are those that have the best results in terms of profitability and sustainability. Since sustainability can be fostered by a higher level of digitization, it also favors the improvement of company performance, we expect that the most sustainable companies are also the most digitized and best performing.

Keywords

• Processes Digitalization
• Digital Technologies
• Sustainability
• Firm’s Performance

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