The Impact of Digitalization and Sustainability on Governance Structures and Corporate Communication: A Cross-Industry and Cross-Country Approach

Abstract

Digitalization and sustainability are changing companies by transforming products, services and operations. While the growth of a digital and sustainable economy may increase firm performance, these new trends also raise potential challenges for companies pertaining to corporate governance structures. Companies are now faced with various alternatives regarding how digitalization and sustainability roles might be integrated into corporate governance structures. We aim to analyse how roles dedicated to digitalization and sustainability have been integrated into governance structures and how these changes impact corporate communication. We provide an explorative analysis in a sample of Italian, French and Spanish companies from the fashion and food sectors. These companies exhibit common features, analogous levels of success and critical factors and similar business models; moreover, fashion and food represent two of the main driving sectors of the selected countries’ economies. For these companies, the findings highlight a positive convergence regarding the inclusion of new corporate roles devoted to managing digitalization and sustainability processes. However, the analysis shows the different impacts of these roles on corporate governance structures and the different ways of externally communicating these impacts. In this sense, our study encourages the identification of governance models and different kinds of corporate communication that are able to promote digitalization processes and sustainable paths for companies. The paper contributes to the field of digitalization and sustainability studies and suggests insights to help practitioners manage related processes by promoting an evolution in the corporate governance structures and corporate communications of food and fashion companies.