Digitisation and Sustainable Development: The Opportunities and Risks of Using Digital Technologies for the Implementation of a Circular Economy

Benjamin Kottmeyer

Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Emerging Economies, 2021, vol. 7, issue 1, 17-23

Abstract: Digitisation is developing a transformational potential that is profoundly changing people, our societies and the planet. Like any major societal transformation, it offers both, significant opportunities for progress and significant risks with harmful consequences for societies. This paper, therefore, addresses the question: ‘What are the critical social outcomes and concerns flowing from the advances in digitisation on our work environment?’ To discuss the broad research question in sufficient depth, this paper focuses not only on specific critical social outcomes of digitisation but also on how some of them can be mitigated by combining digital tools with the concept of a circular economy (representing the abstract idea of sustainable development). The implementation of blockchain technologies and new business models shows that digital technologies have the potential to close the realisation gap between theory and practice of the circular economy concept by enhancing the information flow and the communication between stakeholders in the value chain. Nonetheless, the implementation of these technologies also entails social and economic risks, such as power abuse or regulatory arbitrage, which should be considered in advance. To avoid jeopardising digital innovations, future research should therefore develop a more holistic and interdisciplinary understanding of the complex interactions to exploit the potential of digitisation for social progress.

Keywords: Digitisation; sustainable development; circular economy; blockchain technology; business model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2393957520967799 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jouent:v:7:y:2021:i:1:p:17-23

DOI: 10.1177/2393957520967799

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Emerging Economies from Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().