International Aspects and Challenges of Digital Transformation

This paper aims to examine the international context of the digital transformation sweeping through advanced economies worldwide. The authors focus on both the business-to-business (B2B) and consumer-to-business (C2B) aspects of this process. The B2B perspective is linked with the idea of a fourth industrial revolution, a notion that is also referred to as Industry 4.0, while the C2B perspective involves the growing role and popularity of social media. The paper sets out to identify the interdependencies between these two dimensions of the digital transformation. The authors apply a narrative approach to lay out the main issues related to the process in the international context. The study is a balanced analysis of key issues related to the B2B and B2C streams of the digital transformation. It also outlines the major advantages and threats as well as expected implications of Industry 4.0 and social media. The research encountered a number of challenges that chiefly stemmed from the relative novelty of the discussed problems. These included a lack of first-hand data, a dearth of adequate literature references, and data confidentiality, compounded by firms’ unwillingness to share information. Nevertheless, the authors managed to identify some internationally embedded peculiarities of Industry 4.0 (B2B perspective) and demonstrated the usefulness of social media in new production and communication processes (C2B perspective).