Digital and Sustainable (Twin) Transformations: A Case of SMEs in the European Union

Abstract

In the European Digital Decade 2030 Policy Program, the following guidelines for European digital transformation are named, which means that more than 90% of small- and medium-sized companies reach at least a basic level of digital intensity. In addition to that, the European Commission pays a lot of attention to implementing the “Green Deal” in order to achieve less environmental impact. ICT SMEs already play a key role in Europe’s green and digital transformation, creating technologies that promote sustainability and strengthen Europe’s position. The limited and fragmented application of today’s digital and sustainable technologies in SMEs is observed at the EU level. The bibliometric literature analytical results show that the number of papers on the digital direction is five times higher than on the sustainable direction topic. The paper seeks to identify directions that could help SMEs to speed up this twin transformation in each EU country. The authors proposed a two-stage methodology, which is used for researching twin transformations in SMEs. According to the methodology, first, the authors analysed the indicators of EU-27 SMEs, representing their activity towards the twin transformation, comparing them among other size classes. The results show that the SME’s numbers in the 16 indicators area are worse than the numbers characterizing EU-27 enterprises, having more than ten employees. In addition, a multi-criteria decision making-based assessment framework was constructed to show the progress towards the twin transition. The provided research shows which areas require more attention from SMEs and policy makers responding to the twin transformation objectives.