An exploration of digitalization across multiple domains

Digitalization represents a disruptive phenomenon that has changed how countries, industries, and organizations operate. This shift has led to rethinking value-creation processes, business models, and organizational structures. Digitalization is typically viewed as a transformative process where organizations adopt digital technologies to adapt to rapid changes in their external environment, thereby enhancing efficiency and competitiveness. However, achieving these objectives is not guaranteed, as organizations often face challenges that can hinder or slow down digital transformation. This Thesis explores digitalization through three specific theoretical and practical lenses, each representing an essential aspect of understanding the true impact of digital technologies on organizational, production, and sectoral processes. The first lens examines how Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) investment can drive growth and productivity in the economies of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. Starting from Solow’s paradox, which suggests that technological advances are visible everywhere except in productivity statistics, it examines whether and how ICT capital can enhance national productivity by fostering innovation and generating cycles of economic improvement when supported by effective investment policies and adequate infrastructure. However, this relationship does not always appear in financial data, highlighting the importance of identifying the factors that allow digitalization to influence the macroeconomic level positively. The second lens emphasizes the integration of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) technologies within companies and their synergy with Lean Management practices, which focus on waste reduction and continuous improvement. This lens explores how Lean Management can integrate with digital technologies to optimize production processes, enhance organizational flexibility and maximize corporate efficiency and performance. It aims to demonstrate that the effectiveness of digitalization lies in combining advanced technological tools with organizational attitudes that promote adaptive and lean resource management. The third lens focuses on the healthcare sector, specifically how financial reforms aimed at reducing public spending have impacted the capacity for technological investment and hospital productivity. The healthcare sector has great potential for improvement through digitalization, which can enhance service efficiency and quality by implementing systems for clinical information management, telemedicine, and hospital workflow optimization. However, this lens highlights that budget constraints imposed on the Italian healthcare sector have often limited the funds available for investing in technological innovations, negatively affecting hospital productivity and efficiency. The analysis across these three lenses reveals that digital technologies can be seen as a General-Purpose Technology (GPT), meaning a technology that reaches its full potential only when supported by complementary investments, such as those in human capital, digital infrastructure, and innovative management practices. Furthermore, for these technologies to produce optimal and sustainable outcomes, countries, companies, and sectors must develop dynamic capabilities to manage the uncertainty and continuous changes associated with digital innovation. This threefold analysis underscores the importance of an integrated and proactive approach to digitalization, enabling organizations to fully leverage digital technologies’ transformative potential and respond effectively to the challenges of an ever-evolving environment.