Multidimensional and Strategic Outlook in Digital Business Transformation

Organizations rely on algorithms to exercise mechanized control over workers – referred to as algorithmic control (AC). The use of algorithmic control has evolved into a commonplace with platform-based work in the gig economy, where independent workers are paid for completing a given task (or “gig”). The gig economy is on a steep rise after the onset of the pandemic because employers are more concerned about smaller pieces of jobs being taken up by temporary labor, thereby saving on the investment in full-time resources. Motivation among the gig workers has always been debatable, especially with the onset of AC on the gig workers. This research is an attempt to analyze the disruption of the motivation of gig workers through digital platforms taking self-determination theory (SDT) and social exchange theory (SET) of motivation into consideration. Grounded on the theory of SET and SDT, this chapter explains the underlying characteristics of algorithmic control affecting employee motivation in the gig economy. This is a conceptual framework for the disruption of motivation of the gig workers through the IT-enabled checks on the progress of the gig workers. The future avenues of this research may gather deeper insights on the well-being of gig work and its subsequent impact on family-life integration. This chapter uniquely explores the lesser researched phenomena in the gig economy and highlights the gray side of algorithmic control on gig workers’ motivation.

The human resource department is vital to the long-term success of an organization. It is responsible for very important issues such as employing suitable personnel for their positions within the company, providing these personnel with the necessary training and performance management. In cases where the human resource department does not work effectively, many different departments within the company will be affected by this negativity. This mentioned issue will cause the financial performance of the company to be adversely affected. To increase their performance, the human resource management department should also follow up-to-date practices. Digitization is also a prominent issue in this process. Thanks to the developing technology, the realization of all transactions in the computer environment has also affected human resource activities. In other words, human resource departments can also perform many activities in digital environment. Critical issues such as interviews with the personnel, training, and evaluation of the performance of the personnel can be carried out in the digital environment. This will contribute to the increase in the performance of human resource departments. On the other hand, to manage this process effectively, up-to-date technology investment should be made for the human resource departments, and qualified personnel should be employed in this department. Otherwise, companies that adhere to traditional human resource practices will not be able to compete with others in the long run.

Digitalization provides valuable benefits for entities and offers unique opportunities to strategically address challenges associated with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to ensure a sustainable society. This chapter discusses potential cross-fertilization effects between digitalization and sustainability to catalyze the benefits and challenges of digital transformation on the corporate level and SDGs’ perspective by focusing on sustainable practices. This chapter provides valuable insights for professionals and policymakers on the trends of digitalization and how they can support the SDGs that become a global compass for navigating sustainability challenges.

We are in interesting times in the twenty-first century’s world of service and support, where digital transformation (and artificial intelligence, in particular) is rising, while the focus is being placed on transformation in human resource development. While we are more focused than ever before on advanced tools and technology, we also must focus on advancing human knowledge on digital literacy and workplace practices in an inclusionary manner in this multicultural and borderless world of commerce. Since much of the world transitioned to teleworking during the pandemic closures, we now know that digital diversity is a growing reality that requires additional awareness, reflection, and training for everyone to use it in an equitable and inclusionary manner while complying with privacy and security laws regarding the personally identifiable information of employees and consumers. In this chapter, the focus is on human resources in the areas of digital diversity, data privacy, and inclusion practices since our interactions are transforming along with our mindsets but not necessarily in parallel lines. We offer a reflection on digital diversity, inequity of access to online content, inclusion, data protection, and best practices to create an inclusive digital work environment for all the company’s human resources.

Within the scope of the scale validation process, a total of 363 employees were reached from two different samples to evaluate the psychometric properties of the scale. Descriptive and confirmatory factor analyses and test-retest analyses were performed on the collected data. The findings showed that the scale has a one-factor structure, like the original. The researchers of this chapter believe that the validity and reliability of the Measure for Digital Leadership: Turkish Form will make contributions to the literature on leadership research.

Russia plays a significant role of revisionism in world politics in decreasing the unipolar world system under the US hegemony. Within this context, the role of historical discourse and interventionism of Russia dominates the literature, which undermines the role of energy. This chapter focuses on the role of energy in Russian foreign policy to enhance its influence overseas by considering the power of digitalization all over the world. Russia constructs its energy policies within the framework of a dependency relation with European countries and blocks alternative paths with its geopolitical initiatives. It has become the center of energy transportation with the agreements it has made using its power over the countries of the neighbor energy-rich countries. Finally, as the country that has constructed most of the nuclear energy plants in the world, it established 100-year strategic cooperation in energy. As a result, Russia’s energy policy is one of the great challenges for the US hegemony and enhances its power overseas as a foreign policy tool. Digitalization has been very influential on world energy policies. Thanks to digitalization, very serious increases in industrial production volume can be achieved. This situation will significantly increase the energy need compared to the past. This will increase the advantages for energy-exporting countries. Considering that Russia is the world’s most important natural gas and oil exporter, it is estimated that digitalization will increase energy revenues. On the other hand, this situation will increase the difficulties experienced by energy-importing countries.

The purpose of this chapter is to explain the improvements in digital and human digital twins in practice and to emphasize their importance and necessity in today’s highly competitive business environment. Simply, a digital twin is a virtual replica of a physical object or system that spans its life cycle, is updated from real-time data, and uses simulation, machine learning, and reasoning to help decision-making. The digital twin can be used in everything from the human body to an entire city. In this context, using descriptive analysis, a literature review was conducted. Based on our findings, twin digital proved to be one of the top strategic technology trends of our time with numerous benefits for corporations from reducing costs to increasing growth opportunities, the digital twin is an active agent in value creation, and the applications of digital twins are constantly expanding. As organizations continue to recognize the value of digital twins, we can expect the use of digital twins to evolve and grow.

Turkey has a rich climate diversity, and it is one of the countries that has developed in recent years renewable energy production. Renewable energy resources, which are among the elements that ensure the economic independence of a country, can be listed as wind, solar, biomass, and geothermal resources. Turkey provides energy production through its resources. While engineering and geographical science studies stand out on this subject in the literature, there are limited studies on the social reflections of the subject. In this chapter, social reflections on solar energy production in Turkey were discussed and evaluated within the scope of public relations. According to the data published by the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources, Konya produces the most solar energy in Turkey. Hence Konya City was chosen as the research universe. Focus group research was conducted with 16 participants selected from the residents of the city. The social reflections on solar energy were assembled according to the result of the interviews. This chapter aims to generate a guide in forming public opinion on environmental policies.

Renewable energy investments are of vital importance for the effectiveness of energy policies of countries. The carbon emission problem will be eliminated with the help of these projects. Additionally, renewable energy investments help countries to achieve energy independence. Financing is one of the most important problems of renewable energy projects. The main reason for this is the high-cost and long-term nature of renewable energy projects. Due to these negative aspects, financial institutions such as banks and leasing companies are reluctant to lend to renewable energy projects. This situation also creates a disadvantage for renewable energy projects. Currently, the initial costs of renewable energy projects are very high compared to fossil fuels. This situation creates a cost disadvantage for clean energy projects. Therefore, some actions need to be taken to solve the high-cost problem of these projects. The EU still has an energy infrastructure that is dependent on fossil fuels. Political and military tension and other reasons especially between Ukraine and Russia affect global energy prices, and Europe’s energy supply security is under intense threat. Thus, the EU is faced with increasing energy costs. Rising energy costs make the EU economy more fragile. Therefore, sustainable and zero-carbon energy policies are vital for the EU. Therefore, they must take urgent measures to solve the energy dependency problem of European countries. In this context, renewable energy projects need to be increased. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to develop digital financial products. The initial cost of renewable energy projects is quite high. This situation hinders the increase of the mentioned investments. Digitalized financial products, on the other hand, enable investors to access more funds in a shorter time. This will help increase renewable energy projects. Thus, it will be much easier to solve the energy dependency problem of European countries.

Technology inventions, diverse applications, and regular social media usage have all been advancing faster than ever before throughout the world and certainly in the workplace where employee and consumer data are continually compiled and digitally recorded. As such, the privacy of data and personal information in the workplace must be a top priority for every individual and firm. With the loss of a person’s identifiable information, such as name, phone number, address, and national identification details, one can easily become a victim of identity theft. This chapter focuses on some of the privacy laws that are applicable to companies in the United States. Specifically, the focus is on privacy rights and employee monitoring issues at work or on social media that human resource professionals and managers must be aware of as they design workplace policies.

Realistic job preview (RJP) has been considered an effective way for organizations to provide job candidates with snapshots of both positive and negative aspects of the jobs they apply for. However, research on examining the efficacy of virtual reality-assisted RJP (VR-assisted RJP) is still limited, not to mention the examination of VR-assisted RJP’s capacity on predicting person-organization fit (P-O fit) and person-job fit (P-J fit) and turnover. In this chapter, we review the development of RJP in the past few decades and the development of VR-assisted RJP and discuss concerns of VR-assisted RJP. Implications and future research directions are discussed.

The production and consumption of energy are among the most significant variables that may be used to determine a country’s degree of development. Nuclear energy investments play a critical role for the energy independence. However, nuclear power plants are criticized because of some issues, such as radioactive wastes. In this framework, nuclear power plants can also be worked with thorium instead of uranium so that this problem can be minimized. The biggest obstacle to the realization of green nuclear energy projects is the high costs. To solve this problem, it is important to provide the necessary financing for these investments. In this process, it is seen that financial institutions operating in the market do not meet this need. Financial institutions may be reluctant to finance these projects with very high amounts and uncertainties about their success. There is a need for innovative financial products. It is possible to mention some advantages of presenting these financial products in digital environment. In this way, more investors will be reached. Therefore, it will be possible to have a higher amount of funds. On the other hand, it will be possible to get rid of some fixed costs because of the realization of the transactions in the digital environment. This will also contribute to the reduction of costs. Thus, green nuclear energy investors will be able to access much lower cost loans.

This research aimed to present the digitalization processes affecting tools of international logistics. To facilitate operations in the global supply chain, it was always important to observe the changing business environment and to innovate how the cargo is transported, stored, and prepared for the final market. Looking for a hidden economic potential far from the country of origin has become very popular as offshoring operations become popular. The broader perspective of the value-creating process included remote location and brought prosperity for the international enterprises and local emerging economies. Global supply chain management has become common, especially for global brands and multinational business entities. The specialization in the processes of providing logistics services opened a new market for logistics providers. The international reach of many logistics operations and their sophistication in a form of designing the strategy of supply for many companies provide a critical element for a better connected, globalized economy of the world. The result of this research is that digitalization of processes occurs as an evolutionary way of acquiring data, serving for processing and modeling. It improves coordination and control over resources and operations in the global supply chain.

As information technologies develop, educational technology tools develop and differentiate in parallel. Effective and easily applicable technological learning methods have great effects on both learning styles and teaching styles and even transform them. Keeping in mind the contributions of learning technologies to the learning environment, this chapter aimed to examine the effects of flipped learning styles on students’ personality traits. For this purpose, research data were collected by applying a face-to-face survey to 362 higher education students who accepted voluntary participation, and the obtained data were evaluated and interpreted with the help of statistical analysis. According to the analysis findings, important relationships emerged between the sub-dimensions of the flipped learning sub-dimensions of a model known as the big five models. For example, a flexible environment was found to be explained by 12.9% of personality traits, conscientiousness, extraversion, and openness to experience dimensions. One aspect that unifies this research is that educators’ attention is drawn to the points where the development of information technologies forces them to go beyond the classical classroom face-to-face teaching methods.

As technologies develop in social and business life, approaches change. Different technologies bring about physical and mental transformations. It is possible to do any work more easily with the development of technologies. But this is possible for the one who adapts those technologies. Digital transformation has created many opportunities for companies to adapt to technological transformation. Easier access to customers, the ability to sell products without physical locations, and the acceleration of cancellation and return processes are great opportunities for companies. Taking advantage of these opportunities is possible by completing the digital transformation process. In this chapter, the role and importance of data mining, which are the most important steps of the digital transformation process, are mentioned. Since the digital transformation process requires digitization, “data” has become the most important digital asset of firms. If the data mining processes are texisting data. Effective use of data mining, which is the most important pillar of digital transformation, is possible with a full understanding of data mining. Therefore, the data mining process is explained in detail.

Supply chain management has evolved from the 1980s to the present day by changing, developing, and even using technological applications very intensively. In today’s competitive and rapidly changing world, businesses are seeking opportunities to manage their operations in a more efficient, flexible, autonomous, and profitable way while reducing costs. Digital technologies are getting more involved in every stage of supply chains and supporting the entire chain from the supplier to the customer in planning, decision-making, production, transportation, distribution, and many other logistics activities. This study focuses on how supply chain management will be in the future with the contribution of information technology implementation. For this research, using the document analysis method, firstly, the theses on supply chain management in master’s and doctoral studies of universities in Turkey were examined, and in the second step, published and accessible articles on information technologies were examined. According to the findings, it has been determined that master’s and doctoral theses offer solutions to supply chain management problems by using several different software (AHP, TOPSIS, CRM, IoT, networks, machine learning, RFID, etc.), but the applications of new information technologies (artificial intelligence, cloud computing, databases/big data, robotics, virtual/augmented reality, blockchain, simulation, etc.) have not been used widely. With this research, attention is drawn to the information technologies that supply chain management is likely to use in the future and the benefits that will be gained.

Technological advances have reached the power to change the structural features of organizations. For this reason, traditional methods of doing business are now shelved. It has been replaced by digital technologies. Today, we have come to a process where digital technologies are transformed. This process is tantamount to degradation and redesign. For this reason, businesses always have to keep up-to-date with the strategies about how they progress and the models that are the working logic of these strategies. The reason for existence does not change, but the ability to exist does. The aim is to lead a unique life course by the characteristics of the current era for the future. The aim of working with this point of view is to reveal the competencies that businesses should have to develop a strategic and original model suitable for the system structure in a period characterized by deterioration. What features are required to be successful in digital transformation and to continue living? This question is a research question. In the digital transformation process, I have explained this primarily through the mentality to be possessed. I characterized this structurally as the “entrepreneurial spirit” of the company. Afterward, I explained it in terms of having the technological software and hardware that should be owned financially. I tried to convey the next stage by taking action. I explained this with culture transfer through the mentality of the team and teammates who will do the job. In businesses, culture finds an area to spread through leaders. Therefore, in the next step, I touched on the leadership qualities that should be possessed in the digital transformation process and explained the relationship between the digital transformation process and digital business strategy in the final analysis. The general concept of the study was handled within the framework of transferring the basic business characteristics that must be possessed in the way of digital maturity that will enable us to adapt to the era to have a sustainable working logic suitable for digital transformation, and suggestions were made at the end with the discussion part.

In order to improve their use of digital resources and maximize their potential for return on investment, several sectors are concentrating on developing better digital strategies. Companies must invest in digital reinventions in order to design their business processes for survival in a competitive market. The advancement of an organization’s digital culture depends on its leaders, who have a significant impact on that culture, a novel idea that is currently essential to the industrial setting. However, there are no prior studies that address the focus and particular expertise needed for e-leadership employed in multinational corporations (MNCs) in Northern Malaysia. In order to better understand how e-leadership impacts digital strategies, this study will focus on six distinct e-leadership skills, e-communication, e-change, e-social, e-team, e-tech, and e-trust and their impact on digital strategies.

This study uses a quantitative survey methodology. Two hundred fifty-one employees of multinational companies in Northern Malaysia were surveyed to obtain data. Using SmartPLS 3, structural equation modeling-partial least squares (SEM-PLS) was used to evaluate the data. The results demonstrated that digital strategies are positively and significantly impacted by e-communication, e-change management, and e-trustworthiness skills, while e-social, e-team building skills, and e-technological skills have no impact on digital strategies. In terms of e-leadership and digital strategies, this work makes both theoretical and practical contributions. This study improves knowledge of e-leadership skills that have an impact on digital strategies that are constrained by MNC’s cultural norms. Additionally, it offers crucial details to managers, leaders, and superiors of company entities as well as prospective researchers to help them understand how these e-leadership talents can boost productivity and improve the performance of projects for Malaysian manufacturing companies.