The Leading Digital Technology Companies and Their Approach to Sustainable Development

Abstract

The increasingly stellar attraction of the digital technologies and the growing, though not universal, consensus of the need to build a sustainable future, are two powerful trends within society. The aim of this article is to offer an exploratory review of how the leading companies within the digital transformation market have addressed sustainable development. As such, the article’s originality and value lie in offering a review of current corporate thinking within that market. The study adopts an inductive, qualitative approach based on an examination of published company reports, and identifies six major sustainability themes being actively promoted and supported. The article concludes that the current sustainability objectives of the technology companies are driven as much by commercial reality as any altruistic motives, and that support and promotion of the circular economy may offer the best opportunity for digital technologies to meaningfully impact sustainable development.

Digital Transformation and Convergence toward the 2030 Agenda’s Sustainability Development Goals: Evidence from Italian Listed Firms

“…Despite this knowledge, the relationship between digital transformation and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals has only recently been addressed [7,8,18,19,[60][61][62][63][64], and some controversies exist regarding social and environmental sustainability [4,[10][11][12][13]. Despite the consistent discussion of many potential ways to reach sustainability goals [65][66][67][68][69][70], few recent studies have linked digital transformation to the sustainability paradigm, particularly in terms of the 2030 Agenda.…”

“…In particular, the authors argued that achieving sustainability in the digital era should focus on three main variables: customer centricity, data analytics capability, and business model innovation. Conversely, other authors focused on either the effects of smart technologies on sustainable business models [71][72][73][74][75][76] or on how the leading firms in the digital industry have addressed the issue of sustainable development [63].…”

Boosting Sustainability through Digital Transformation’s Domains and Resilience

“…The other study provides a literature review over DT and sustainability and presents a framework with four key areas including: pollution control, waste management, sustainable production, and urban sustainability [21]. Other researchers study how the big companies have tackled sustainable development, covering a variety of challenges in the digital transformation topic [29].…”

Digitalization in small and medium enterprise: a parsimonious model of digitalization of accounting information for sustainable innovation ecosystem value generation

“…These principles require open and thoughtful solutions from managers when handling organizational goals and undertaking the responsibilities of managers to definite stakeholders (Freeman et al , 2010). ST was the preeminent point of view in theorizing corporate sustainable development (Chan and Oppong, 2017), as there would be a myriad of paramount information captured from stakeholders for enterprises’ sustainable development achievements (Jones and Wynn, 2021). As such, ST has transformed from a simple and static theory focusing on stakeholder groups and their roles into a more dynamic and complicated associations-focused paradigm that combines interdependencies, conflicts and intergroup standpoints (Lock and Seele, 2016).…”