Digitalisation Risks and their Impact on Business Sustainability

This study endeavours to explore the multifaceted risks associated with digitalisation, with a particular focus on their impact on the sustainability of businesses and strategies for reducing the negative effects. In their long-term journey to obtain sustainability, organisations are urged to remain flexible and embrace the digital innovations to ensure their relevance in the market, by responding to their client’s needs. Organisations should analyse all parts of digitalisation, not only the benefits, to ensure they know what type of risks they will face, in order to be able to control them. Such risks as cybersecurity threats, digital skills gap, data privacy issues among others can have a potential impact on business sustainability. For this study a mixed research method was used, starting with reviewing the relevant literature of digitalisation risks and impact of digitalisation risks on sustainability. Afterwards, secondary data from Eurostat database was analysed using quantitative methods. The selection of this topic was done due to the growing significance of the two terms digitalisation and sustainability in both the research literature and the operational reality of organisations worldwide. Therefore, we consider the paper relevant for other researchers, students, practitioners and organisations stakeholders. The paper demonstrates originality by offering novel perspectives into the intersection of sustainability and digitalisation, through analysing the risks and their impact.