International Aspects and Challenges of Digital Transformation

Marta Götz, Małgorzata Bartosik-Purgat and Barbara Jankowska

Gospodarka Narodowa. The Polish Journal of Economics, 2018, issue 1, 87-102

Abstract: This paper aims to examine the international context of the digital transformation sweeping through advanced economies worldwide. The authors focus on both the business-to-business (B2B) and consumer-to-business (C2B) aspects of this process. The B2B perspective is linked with the idea of a fourth industrial revolution, a notion that is also referred to as Industry 4.0, while the C2B perspective involves the growing role and popularity of social media. The paper sets out to identify the interdependencies between these two dimensions of the digital transformation. The authors apply a narrative approach to lay out the main issues related to the process in the international context. The study is a balanced analysis of key issues related to the B2B and B2C streams of the digital transformation. It also outlines the major advantages and threats as well as expected implications of Industry 4.0 and social media. The research encountered a number of challenges that chiefly stemmed from the relative novelty of the discussed problems. These included a lack of first-hand data, a dearth of adequate literature references, and data confidentiality, compounded by firms’ unwillingness to share information. Nevertheless, the authors managed to identify some internationally embedded peculiarities of Industry 4.0 (B2B perspective) and demonstrated the usefulness of social media in new production and communication processes (C2B perspective).

Keywords: digital transformation; Industry 4.0; big data; social media; B2B; C2B (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F23 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.journalssystem.com/gna/pdf-100569-32410 Full text (application/pdf)

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:sgh:gosnar:y:2018:i:1:p:87-102

Access Statistics for this article

Gospodarka Narodowa. The Polish Journal of Economics is currently edited by Marek Gruszczyński, Grzegorz Konat

More articles in Gospodarka Narodowa. The Polish Journal of Economics from Warsaw School of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Grzegorz Konat ().