University 01

According to the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) published by Eurostat, Eastern European countries have the lowest level of integration of digital technologies into firm-level operations. Furthermore, the growth level of business digitalization in these countries is below the EU average, meaning that currently there is no convergence to a more widespread digitalization of businesses across all EU countries. This project proposes to contribute to overcoming this major challenge by applying a bidirectional research approach, based on both (1) micro and (2) macro-level analyses. (1) The starting point of the micro-level analysis is provided by the fact that many companies in the region struggle currently with selecting the relevant digital technologies and implementing them successfully into their operations. (2) The macro-level approach aims to increase the generalizability of our results by analysing country-level company databases.