Kesidou, E. orcid.org/0000-0002-5729-8624, Ri, A. and Roper, S. (2025) Balancing Act or Two Roads to Travel: Evaluating the Trade-offs Between Digitalization and Net Zero Innovation in SMEs. Small Business Economics. ISSN 0921-898X
Abstract
As firms face the dual challenges of digitalization and net zero innovation to combat climate change, understanding how these twin transitions relate is crucial. This study examines potential synergies or trade-offs between digital technologies and net zero innovations in UK SMEs. By integrating the Resource-Based View (RBV) and the Attention-Based View (ABV), we explore how categories of digital adopters relate to categories of net zero innovation adopters. Utilizing novel survey data for 964 UK SMEs, we employ ordered Probit estimation to examine the relationship between digital and net zero adoption. Our results reveal that digitally advanced SMEs are more likely to be advanced adopters of net zero innovations, suggesting that digital complementarities and enhanced capabilities can reinforce environmental innovations that reduce carbon emissions. We offer valuable contributions for both theory and practice, highlighting the importance of supporting SMEs in their twin transitions.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2025. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Keywords: | Digitalization, Net zero innovation, SMEs |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Business (Leeds) > Economics Division (LUBS) (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 07 Jan 2025 11:34 |
Last Modified: | 07 Feb 2025 16:49 |
Published Version: | https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11187-0... |
Status: | Published online |
Publisher: | Springer |
Identification Number: | 10.1007/s11187-025-00998-4 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:221389 |