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. Our project proposes to contribute to overcoming this major challenge by applying a bidirectional research approach, based on both micro and 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. Using case study analysis, we propose to identify and offer a deeper understanding of the key challenges faced by companies adopting different types of digital technologies and to map potential solutions and best practices to overcome these challenges. To offer a more comprehensive understanding, we investigate challenges and solutions from technological, strategic and organizational perspectives as well, this latter including human-related challenges too.

2. The macro-level approach aims to increase the generalizability of our results by analysing country-level company databases, such as Eurostat’s survey database on the ICT usage by enterprises. The analysis of such databases enables the identification of existing digitalization patterns (i.e., technology combinations) on sectoral level, and can be combined with databases on firm-level performance. By further combining this database with national transaction data among firms (e.g., national VAT statistics), we aim to map how digital technologies spread in supply chains and how buyer-supplier relationships in supply chains can support the proliferation of successful digital technology implementation among firms.