Digital Transformation and Sustainability Goals: Advancing the “Twin Transition”

The digital transformation (DT) journey has long been underway, yielding valuable digital technologies that assist companies in their pursuit of environmentally conscious practices. Moreover, companies are recognizing the inherent synergy between digital innovation and sustainability, as these two forces converge to facilitate mutually reinforcing advancements, greatly enhancing achievable environmental, social, and economic outcomes. In a recent book [1], Za et al. discuss about the surge of two perspectives concerning the intersection of DT and sustainability as discussed within the realm of Information Systems (IS): the perspective of sustainability through DT, centred on how digital artifacts and their adoption can bolster sustainability objectives, and the perspective of sustainability in DT, which focuses on designing the transformation itself to possess sustainability. More recently, the concept of the “twin transition” emerged as a “fancy” term used to describe the utilization of technology and data to propel sustainability objectives, gaining popularity among organizations aiming to enhance their Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) performance. Indeed, the emergence of cutting-edge digital technologies has sparked a fresh surge of hope that a diverse spectrum of social, economic, and environmental objectives could finally come to fruition, together with the aspiration for a sustainable, all-encompassing growth. Therefore, although sustainability and digitalization initiatives were previously largely treated as distinct endeavours, they are now viewed as synergistic drivers capable of significantly enhancing intended results.