This special issue is intended to stimulate scholarly debate and empirical inquiry into how innovation mechanisms and knowledge management can drive sustainable development through digitalisation.
Guest editors:
Alberto Ferraris (Corresponding Guest Editor)
Department of Management, University of Turin
alberto.ferraris@unito.it
Nikolett Deutsch
Institute of Business Development, Corvinus University of Budapest
nikolett.deutsch@uni-corvinus.hu
Francesco Antonio Perotti
Department of Management, University of Turin
Francescoantonio.perotti@unito.it
Dominik K. Kanbach
HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management, Jahnallee 59, Leipzig 04109, Germany
dominik.kanbach@hhl.de
Special issue information:
Background and motivation
In the last decade, pressing environmental and social challenges have increasingly engaged academics and practitioners (Raman et al., 2024). The global imperative to address environmental degradation, climate change, and social inequalities has brought corporate sustainability to the forefront of policy, management, and innovation discourse. As the world strives to meet the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the requirements posed by the European Green Deal, the convergence between digitalisation and sustainability offers a powerful lever to achieve sustainable development.
Previous studies recognised the nexus between business digitalisation and sustainable development (e.g. Hellemans et al., 2022; Pricopoaia et al., 2025), which holds transformative potential for responsibly reshaping how businesses create, deliver, and capture value. Established and emerging technologies such as the Internet of Things, blockchain, big data analytics, and artificial intelligence offer powerful tools to reduce environmental impact, optimise resource use, enhance transparency across supply chains, and establish restorative systems (Nishant et al., 2020; Perotti et al., 2024). However, many organisations face critical challenges in translating technological potential into tangible sustainability outcomes (Hellemans et al., 2022; Meinhold et al., 2025; Wei et al., 2023). The literature outlines considerable gaps in aligning digital strategies with sustainability objectives (Grybauskas et al., 2022; Guandalini, 2022; Kar et al., 2022), including the lack of strategic integration between digital and sustainability agendas, insufficient alignment of technological investments with environmental and social goals, and limited organisational capabilities to translate digital innovation into measurable sustainability outcomes. Our premises highlight the need to examine the enabling mechanisms that make digitalisation and sustainability work in practice. Particularly, innovation mechanisms and knowledge management emerge as pivotal levers.
On the one hand, knowledge management is critical in bridging the gap between digitalisation and sustainable development by enabling organisations to systematically capture, share, and apply knowledge that drives innovation and informed decision-making (Lim & Hwang, 2024; Riaz et al., 2024). As businesses navigate the dual transformation towards digital maturity and sustainability, knowledge management offers the foundation for aligning strategic goals, facilitating the diffusion of best practices, and supporting organisational resilience (Huang et al., 2025; Wang et al., 2022). In this vein, effective knowledge management practices enhance key organisational capabilities needed to support such a transformation. For instance, absorptive capacity allows businesses to recognise, assimilate, and apply new sustainability-related knowledge from external sources into digital innovation processes (Khan & Tao, 2022; Lee et al., 2024; Rodríguez-González et al., 2023). Similarly, the development of dynamic capabilities relies heavily on robust knowledge flows within and across organisational boundaries to sense, seize, and reconfigure businesses (Feroz et al., 2023). Moreover, data management becomes a core dimension of knowledge management in the digital age. By strategically managing knowledge and data, businesses are better equipped to make transparent, evidence-based decisions that support long-term sustainability goals while unlocking the full potential of digital technologies (Wang, 2023).
On the other hand, to fully harness the potential of digital technologies in advancing corporate sustainability, innovation processes must be fundamentally reoriented to reflect new strategic priorities (Cabrilo et al., 2024; Pereira et al., 2025; Vo-Thai & Tran, 2025). Traditional approaches to innovation—often focused on cost reduction, efficiency, or short-term market gains—are no longer sufficient in today's markets, where the demand for sustainable products and services steadily rises (PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2024; Reichheld et al., 2023). Instead, innovation must increasingly serve as a strategic mechanism for embedding sustainability goals into the core of digital transformation efforts (Dzhunushalieva & Teuber, 2024; Shahzad et al., 2022). Drawing on the resource-based view, firms must recognise that sustainability-oriented innovation capabilities – such as the ability to integrate environmental criteria into product design or leverage digital tools for green operations – represent valuable, rare, and hard-to-imitate resources that can support long-term competitive advantage (Alkaraan et al., 2024). Furthermore, as stakeholder theory emphasises, firms must engage a broad network of stakeholders in the innovation process to empower digital technologies and pursue sustainable development (Perotti et al., 2025; Quttainah & Ayadi, 2024; Zhang et al., 2025). This calls for collaborative innovation models that foster co-creation and align digital solutions with social and environmental purposes. In summary, innovation management becomes a driver of sustainable, digital-enabled business transformation.
Even the intertwined role of knowledge management and innovation mechanisms is central to unlocking the transformative potential of business digitalisation in the service of sustainable development (He et al., 2024; Di Vaio et al., 2021; Vo-Thai & Tran, 2025). While innovation processes provide the frameworks to generate and implement novel solutions, knowledge management ensures that the right insights, expertise, and data inform those innovations at every stage. These two domains are mutually reinforcing: innovation depends on the timely availability and effective use of knowledge, while knowledge management systems must evolve to support rapidly changing innovation landscapes shaped by digital technologies and sustainability imperatives. Together, they enable organisations to fully capitalise on digitalisation as a strategic lever for sustainable development.
Objectives and themes
This special issue is intended to stimulate scholarly debate and empirical inquiry into how innovation mechanisms and knowledge management can drive sustainable development through digitalisation. Although interest from both academics and practitioners has grown in recent years, critical research gaps persist regarding the successful integration of digital technologies in businesses for sustainable development. By focusing on knowledge management and innovation mechanisms, we aim to raise emerging trends, theoretical developments, and new empirical insights by contributing to the literature and offering actionable insights.
This call for papers welcomes contributions that include, but are not limited to, the following themes.
1. Knowledge management in enabling sustainable digitalisation
- How do knowledge management practices influence the success of sustainability-oriented digital transformations?
- What role do organisational learning and absorptive capacity play in integrating environmental and social knowledge into digital strategies?
- How can businesses effectively manage and transform data into actionable knowledge to improve corporate sustainability?
- What are the challenges and opportunities of implementing digital knowledge repositories and AI-based knowledge systems for sustainability?
- How does knowledge sharing across functions and organisational boundaries foster green digital innovation?
2. Rethinking innovation mechanisms for sustainable digital transformation
- How can firms reorient innovation processes to integrate sustainability goals into digital transformation initiatives?
- What types of innovation capabilities (e.g., eco-innovation, social innovation, frugal innovation) are most effective in leveraging digital tools for corporate sustainability?
- In what ways can open and collaborative innovation models contribute to co-developing sustainable digital solutions with external stakeholders?
- How do business models innovate to leverage digital technologies for circular or regenerative outcomes?
- What are the enablers and barriers for embedding sustainability criteria into digital product and service design?
3. Critical resources and capabilities for Sustainable Digital Innovation
- Which organisational capabilities are most critical to aligning digital innovation with sustainability objectives?
- How do dynamic capabilities enable firms to sense, seize, and reconfigure for sustainable digital transformation?
- What is the interplay between digital competencies and sustainability-related capabilities in generating shared value?
- How can firms build and deploy rare, inimitable knowledge-based resources to create green digital products and services?
- To what extent do capability-building initiatives (e.g., training, upskilling, cross-sector partnerships) support business digitalisation and sustainable development?
4. Stakeholder engagement and governance in digital sustainability transitions
- How can stakeholder engagement strategies enhance digital innovations' social and environmental legitimacy?
- What governance models best support transparent, inclusive, and responsible digitalisation in sustainable businesses?
- How do firms reconcile the tensions between digital growth objectives and stakeholder sustainability expectations?
- In what ways can collaboration and co-creation with stakeholders accelerate the design of sustainable digital solutions?
- What institutional or regulatory factors influence the integration of sustainability and digitalisation in business practices?
5. Harnessing knowledge management and innovation for sustainable and resilient growth
- How can businesses achieve long-term resilience to cope with disruptions while pursuing sustainable development?
- What role do knowledge management and innovation play in enhancing organisational resilience?
- What capabilities, knowledge, or data would support sustainable innovation and long-term resilience?
- How does business digitalisation trigger resilient growth by interacting with environmental and social dimensions of sustainability?
6. Embedding Digital Transformation in Heterogeneous Contexts
Finally, we welcome submissions from different contexts and sectors at the frontiers of innovation. Real time case studies and industry-specific dynamics (e.g. retail sector) may be of interest to upgrade common knowledge on the topic. Moreover, we welcome interdisciplinary research (e.g. human resource management practices and big data analytics) that play a relevant role in improving innovation and knowledge management practices in specific contexts and sectors.
Manuscript submission information:
All papers will undergo a double-blind peer review process, ensuring a rigorous and high-quality selection of contributions.
Key Dates
· Submission Start Date: May 2025
· Submission Deadline: December 2025
How to Submit
Manuscripts should be submitted via the journal's online submission system, selecting the Special Issue on "Pursuing sustainable development through business digitalisation: How to harness innovation and knowledge management". For any inquiries, please contact the corresponding Guest Editor (alberto.ferraris@unito.it).
We look forward to receiving your contributions!
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