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FEELING READY? THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN
DIGITAL READINESS AND SUSTAINABLE
GROWTH IN THE EUROPEAN FOOD INDUSTRY.

Magali Pino, Gabriella Esposito, Shaocong Bo

► To cite this version:

Magali Pino, Gabriella Esposito, Shaocong Bo. FEELING READY? THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN DIGITAL READINESS AND SUSTAINABLE GROWTH IN THE EUROPEAN FOOD INDUSTRY.. III ICEM Conference, Oct 2023, Valencia (Espagne), France. pp.28-34. hal-04694230

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# FEELING READY? THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN DIGITAL READINESS AND SUSTAINABLE GROWTH IN THE EUROPEAN FOOD INDUSTRY.

Magali Pino

University of Turin, Italy

University Jean-Moulin Lyon III, France

magali.pino@unito.it

Gabriella Esposito

University of Turin, Italy

gabriella.esposito@unito.it

Shaocong Bo

University of Turin, Italy

shaocong.bo@unito.it
Abstract

In the face of the challenging demography, nutrition, and climate change crises, the world needs to achieve tangible steps toward a sustainable food system while at the same time increasing its production to meet the growing demand (Hassoun, Aït-Kaddour, et al., 2022). In this context, the agriculture and food (Agri&Food) firms must produce without interruption, healthy, safe, tasty, affordable, and sustainable food (Van Mil et al., 2014). Currently, the food system is too consuming, too polluting and too wasteful in terms of natural resources (Hassoun, Prieto, et al., 2022). If no change is made, the food system will not be able to provide safe, healthy, nutritious products to the increasing population within planetary boundaries (Marvin et al., 2022). Thus, a shift towards food system sustainability is essential and innovative solutions are urgently needed (Hassoun, Prieto, et al., 2022). It is important to note that, the production of food relies on the access to resources (i.e., land, energy, fresh water, or soil nutrients). Current degradation and use of these resources surmount their regeneration rate (Bindraban et al., 2012; Molden et al., 2007). In addition, the production of food causes emissions that deteriorate the planet environmental layers (Rockström et al., 2009). To reduce the production impact while ensuring the needs of current and future generations, the United Nations defined, in 2015, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). SDGs are highly entangled with the food system and call for a change of both its model of governance and structure (Hassoun, Prieto, et al., 2022). A systemic approach is essential to hit the transition and achieve the SDGs. In Europe SDGs have been translated through the EU Green Deal (European Commission, 2023). EU Green deal intend to transform the EU into a cutting-edge community, resource-efficient and economically competitive; ensuring to reach zero net emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050. Scholars have demonstrated that digitalisation represents great potential to succeed in this transition; thus recommending to combine the EU Green Deal with the Digital strategy vision (Marvin et al., 2022). Indeed, digitalisation, alluded to as the use of computer technologies and ICT, is providing innovative opportunities to sort out current challenges and opening up new avenues of growth (Hassoun, Prieto, et al., 2022; Nasution et al., 2018; Soomro et al., 2020). Expectations regarding the possibilities offered by digitalisation to achieve SDGs are rather high (Beier et al., 2021). To leverage at best the benefits offered by digitalisation, firms need to ensure and measure their digital readiness (Soomro et al., 2020). In this context, the concept of digital readiness interlinked with sustainable growth is attracting increasing interest but remains understudied (Denicolai et al., 2021; Trischler & Li-Ying, 2022). In particular, we lack a clear overview of the
link between digital readiness mechanisms and its impacts on sustainable growth options. In other words, scholars have not addressed how digital readiness favours or inhibits future real growth options particularly in the context of sustainable growth (Denicolai et al., 2021).

Over the past years, many scholars have investigated the importance of sustainability and sustainable development and how to achieve SDGs (Beier et al., 2021; Johnson & Schaltegger, 2016). The concept of sustainability refers to the ability to support current development without compromising future needs (Zaccai, 2012). For one stream of research, sustainability is the process of achieving sustainable development (Sartori & Silva, 2014), and for another, sustainable development is the journey to fulfil sustainability (Lozano, 2008). Both are based on the “three pillars approach” which refer to the need to balance economic, environmental and social objectives (Zaccai, 2012). From the business perspective, it refers to the firms’ strategies and activities implemented to achieve the three integrated goals (Yusoff et al., 2018). Sustainable growth is a derived concept, referring to the application of the three pillars to achieve long-term perspective of growth (Doane & MacGillivray, 2001). Digitalisation, can support in this direction and help firms enlarge their business in a sustainable way (Szabó et al., 2023). For example, scholars have demonstrated that implementing and using tools such as cloud computing, Internet of Things (IoT), or wireless sensor networks, can improve the management of a supply chain. Findings, even reveal a reduction in costs and an improvement in service ensuring sustainable growth (Kittichotsatsawat et al., 2021). In a nutshell, digitalisation is transforming the entire industry structure, the nature of competition, and stakeholders’ limits, exposing them to new opportunities (Ciasullo et al., 2022; A. Ferreira et al., 2022; Hervé et al., 2020; Soomro et al., 2020). Digitalisation is the result of three interlinked components of digital technologies: 1) digital artefacts (a digital component such as a digital content which is part of an offer and brings value to the user), 2) digital infrastructures (a set of digital tools that offer computing capabilities), and 3) digital platforms (a set of shared services) (J. J. M. Ferreira et al., 2023). To leverage the three components of digital technologies, firms need to ensure and measure their digital readiness (Soomro et al., 2020). Digital readiness is defined as the ability of a firm to embrace and use digital technologies (Denicolai et al., 2021), thus embracing digitalisation. Previous studies, highlight the need to align digital readiness goals with the business strategy. Firms are struggling to reach their objectives due to their lack of digital readiness (Machado et al., 2020). To measure firms’ digital readiness, and as a result the gaps that need to be filled, multiple scales have been developed (Soomro et al., 2020). However, we lack an overview of how the readiness results impact sustainable development options (Denicolai et al., 2021). Knowing that, it is of concern to better understand the impacts of digital
readiness on possible sustainable growth directions (Denicolai et al., 2021). Reviewing the existing literature, conceptualising the field and identifying future research directions will be a first step in that direction (Tranfield et al., 2003; S. S. Xiao et al., 2020). Essentially, to advance knowledge, scholars must access a holistic view of what is already known and thus build their research on prior existing work. Among the different methods for reviewing the literature, the integrative one allows to screen, critique, and synthetise an exhaustive part of the literature to develop new perspectives. This method combines both the strengths of narrative review (discovery process) with the power of systematic approaches to minimise bias and improve transparency (Fan et al., 2022). Therefore, we define a clear methodology regarding our search criteria (cf. Table 1) and our selection criteria. By doing so we aim to outline 1) where we select our literature (SCOPUS and Web Of Sciences to ensure the best coverage), 2) when we conduct our research (up until September 2023), 3) how we find the articles (selection of keyword to capture conceptual boundaries connected with Boolean operators), 4) what data-set we will select, and 5) why we will include or exclude some articles (Callahan, 2010)

<table><caption>**Table 1:** Combination of keywords use to select the articles</caption><thead><tr><th>String 1</th><th></th><th>String 2</th><th></th><th>String 3</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>"digital readiness*"<br>OR "digital maturity" OR<br>"digitalization*" OR<br>"digital" OR<br>"digitalisation*" OR<br>"digital transformation" OR "information and communication<br>technolog*" OR<br>"industry 4.0"</td><td>AND</td><td>"sustainable<br>growth*" OR<br>"sustainable<br>business model*" OR<br>"sustainable<br>business*" OR<br>"sustainabilit*"</td><td>AND</td><td>"food industr*" OR<br>"food sector*" OR<br>"food compan*"</td></tr></tbody></table>

While scholars have focused on the role of digitalisation on sustainable transition and growth, little attention has been paid on digital readiness in this context. This study will be a first attempt to present a holistic framework from a food system perspective of the topic and identify future research directions. To the best of our knowledge, this research is one of the first to connect the two streams of research (digital readiness and sustainable growth) in terms of
sustainable growth effects. We are still at an early stage of our research but our first findings seem to confirm the importance for firms in the food industry to evaluate their digital readiness to achieve their sustainable growth objectives. In addition, our study should lead us to several recommendations for future research directions.

We believe that results shall benefits scholars, managers and policy makers. From a scholarly perspective, we will provide a better understanding of the relevant concepts to investigate the link between digital readiness and sustainable growth, thus allowing to achieve sustainable objectives. From a managerial perspective the paper will provide insights to face the food system challenges. From a European policy perspective, these insights will help in modernizing the policies and answering the EC European Green Deal communication leveraging the Digital Strategy vision.

**Keywords:** Digital readiness; Sustainability; Growth options; Food industry

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