Digital transformation: A literature review in the context of international economies and finance

Abstract

Purpose: The digitisation of economies and finance shows the importance of digital transformation (DT) in helping countries, markets and institutions to remain competitive. The changes brought about are not only technological in nature in certain market niches but affect the globality of a country’s institutions with environmental and social implications. For this reason, in recent years, DT has received increasing attention from researchers, and this study will show its evolution of DT and its components in the period 2012–2022.

Design/methodology/approach: For this purpose, a literature review with bibliometric analysis is carried out, in order to evaluate DT and its components in emerging and developed economy countries. In the statistical work, the bibliometrix and biblioshiny software packages were used to perform data extraction and quantitative analysis of the research articles, obtained from the Web of Science databases.

Findings/results: A total of 164 articles were selected for the research, which served to identify the most relevant publications on the case of DT in developing versus developed countries.

Practical implications: Thus, this research is of great interest to academics and practitioners who can explore knowledge on DT in a global context and analyse the main trends and authors contributing to knowledge in this scientific field.

Originality/value: The conclusions obtained refer both to the theoretical framework and to the implications for the management of both public administrations and international governmental organisations.