Digitalisation in rural business

Digitalisation is radically changing the economy on both the global and the local level. In order to adapt to the changes, firms need to take advantage of the opportunities and tackle the challenges that digital technology represents. Firms in rural areas have particular challenges, and this is also the case when it comes to digitalisation. The aim of the project is to contribute to a deeper understanding of digitalisation in rural business. As a starting point, the project will approach digitalisation as a general phenomenon, but may also focus on a more specific topic such as digital competencies. A natural unit of analysis is the firm itself, but the project may also investigate the business environment and the role of other actors such as municipalities. The plan is to first conduct a systematic literature review. This review may form the basis for further analyses of both a conceptual/theoretical, quantitative and qualitative nature.

The ongoing digital transformation, i.e. adopting digital technologies in enhancing processes, activities and competencies of companies (Bohnsack et al. 2018; Pesch et al. 2018), not only improves the companies’ resilience under drastic economic change but also enhance companies’ competitiveness for sustainable growth and outreach to new market segments. Digital technologies and devices such as smartphones, smart products, the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence, and deep learning are significant elements in the transformation. Digital transformation of rural businesses is a special theme due to the complex combinations of geographical, cultural, social, technical and personal attributes, such as location, business culture, business domain, education, age, digital skills, etc., which can influence the adoption of digital technologies. In this context, the business environment of the regional business plays a vital role in supporting and enabling the stable operations and sustainable growth of the business. This includes local authorities, i.e. multicipalities, local investor network, research and development institutes and other governmental units. In any geographical case, it is important to understand the digital transformation under the influence of these contextual factors. In this proposed project, we focus: a) on an interdisciplinary theoretical development of digital transformation process for rural businesses, b) iteratively develop a conceptual framework mapping ecosystem-level and business-level factors for performing the transformation, c) empirically evaluate the approach in a longitudinal case study.