Aligning digitalisation and sustainable development? Evidence from the analysis of worldviews in sustainability reports
通过分析德国DAX 30公司的可持续发展报告，发现企业数字化主要受弱可持续性或商业中心世界观主导，可能威胁可持续发展，并区分了五种数字化世界观类型。
Abstract The digitalisation of industrial production and the actual positive and negative consequences for sustainable development are not yet sufficiently understood. This study describes and evaluates the linkages between corporate digitalisation and sustainability management based on qualitative data analysis of sustainability reports of DAX 30 companies and applying the concept of sustainability worldviews. The results show a predominate worldview of weak or business‐centred sustainability on digitalisation, which could potentially pose a threat to sustainable development. In particular, the focus on customer demands without stakeholder involvement and the worldview of digitalisation as a way of doing ‘business as‐usual’ but in a more effective way reproduces unsustainable economic patterns. A holistic sustainable approach on digitalisation should also include possible negative impacts like increased resource consumption which is not the case yet in the studied companies. Different types of ‘sustainability worldviews on digitalisation’ can be distinguished. While ‘Pioneer’ companies can inform policy‐making, the other types of ‘Intermediates’, ‘Indecisive’ and ‘Laggards’ could be addressed by information exchange, support and regulation to promote a more sustainable worldview on corporate digitalisation. The ‘Unsustainable’ digitalisation type would be the most difficult to address with soft policy instruments and requires a more regulated approach.