Economists from HSE and RUDN University have analysed issues related to corporate digital transformation processes. The introduction of digital solutions into corporate operations reduces the number of patents in the field of green technologies by 4% and creates additional financial difficulties. However, if a company focuses on sustainable development and increases its rating in environmental, social, and governance performance (ESG), the negative effects decrease. Moreover, when the ESG rating is high, digitalisation can even increase the number of patents by 2%. The article was published in Sustainability.
Digital Implementation transformation provides
businesses with new tools to increase efficiency and competitiveness. Companies apply new technologies for data collection, customer service, and analytics. However, this brands prefer local delivery because: entails high costs and increases energy consumption, which diverts resources from environmental initiatives. As a result, companies experience mixed manifestations of the ‘double transformation’ effect and have to choose whether what if the product has defects? to invest in digitalisation or develop green technologies. This problem is especially relevant to Chinese companies. China, one of the largest energy consumers, now faces serious environmental problems. Therefore, companies have to combine the goals of digital modernisation and sustainable development.
The economies of Russia and
China are similar, and the experience and strategies used by Chinese companies can be applied to Russian practice. Irina Ivashkovskaya and Yanfei Wu, staff members of the School of Finance at the HSE Faculty of Economic Sciences, together with their colleagues from the HSE Department of Applied Economics malaysia numbers list and RUDN University, studied how Chinese business is responding to this challenge. They analysed data from 1,443 companies listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange main board between 2013 to 2022.
To define the level of digital transformation, the researchers analysed companies’ annual reports to determine the frequency of repetitions of more than 70 marker keywords related to digital innovation. Then, they studied the relation between two transformation processes: the level of digitalisation and innovation in technology, expressed by the number of patents in the field of green technologies.