The Sustainability of Digital Networks and Globalisation, the Key to Resilience?

Titan, Emilia; Apostu, Simona-Andreea; Mihai, Mihaela; Paraschiv, Dorel; Manea, Daniela Article The Sustainability of Digital Networks and Globalisation, the Key to Resilience? Amfiteatru Economic Provided in Cooperation with: The Bucharest University of Economic Studies Suggested Citation: Titan, Emilia; Apostu, Simona-Andreea; Mihai, Mihaela; Paraschiv, Dorel; Manea, Daniela (2023) : The Sustainability of Digital Networks and Globalisation, the Key to Resilience?, Amfiteatru Economic, ISSN 2247-9104, The Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Vol. 25, Iss. Special Issue No. 17, pp. 950-967, https://doi.org/10.24818/EA/2023/S17/950 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/281743 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. 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If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ AE The Sustainability of Digital Networks and Globalisation, the Key to Resilience? 950 Amfiteatru Economic THE SUSTAINABILITY OF DIGITAL NETWORKS AND GLOBALISATION, THE KEY TO RESILIENCE? Dorel Paraschiv1, Daniela Manea2 * , Emilia Țițan3, Simona-Andreea Apostu4 and Mihaela Mihai5 1)2)3)4)5)Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Romania Please cite this article as: Paraschiv, D., Manea, D., Țițan, E., Apostu, S.A. and Mihai, M., 2023. The Sustainability of Digital Networks and Globalisation, the Key to Resilience?. Amfiteatru Economic, 25(Special Issue 17), pp. 950-967. DOI: https://doi.org/10.24818/EA/2023/S17/950 Article History Received: 15 August 2023 Revised: 5 September 2023 Accepted: 19 September 2023 Abstract Rethinking the concept of resilience in the post-pandemic period is urgently needed considering an uncertain and unpredictable future. To identify the necessary solutions for the recovery of the economy, the involvement of all actors in the socio-economic and political environment is vital. Consolidating regional development, intensifying global cooperation, and developing sustainable business models in the field of digital entrepreneurship are necessary pillars in revitalising the economy and creating a sustainable economy. In this context, using data for the countries of the European Union, it was shown, using statistical methods of multivariate analysis, that globalisation and digitalisation are necessary to achieve resilience. Thus, new opportunities are opening up for creating development strategies that can prepare socio-economic systems for future shocks and uncertainties. Keywords: resilience, globalisation, digitalisation, networks, sustainability, multivariate analysis JEL Classification: L14, L26, C01, O52 * Corresponding author, Daniela Manea – e-mail: [email protected] This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2023 The Author(s). Sustainable Development and Technological Challenges AE Vol. 25 • Special Issue No. 17 • November 2023 951 Introduction The coronavirus pandemic highlighting the difficulty in facing an uncertain and unpredictable future. Although resilience in not a new concept at this time it is necessary to be updated and rethought considering disruption impact of COVID-19 crisis and robust recovery approach. Global economic uncertainty causes crisis management to be approached more from a behavioral perspective than an economic one, defining the prepandemic period (Grewal and Tansuhaj, 2001; Ratten, 2020). Simultaneously, the dynamics of entrepreneurial ecosystems are influenced by the phenomenon of globalisation but also by changes due to technological progress, which shows the importance of analysing the evolution of entrepreneurial behavior in terms of digitalisation and innovative decision-making capabilities (Korber and McNaughton, 2017). This test fact is also confirmed in the specialised literature by identifying a strong correlation between social sustainability, innovation, and competitiveness not only at the organisation level, but also at the country level (Fonseca and Lima, 2015; Fonseca, Domingues and Dima, 2020). Considered an essential feature of the entrepreneurial ecosystem, resilience can be a trigger for entrepreneurial intentions, as evidenced by the European Union's strategies and policies on the possibility of remedying immediate economic and social damage caused by the coronavirus pandemic (European Commission, 2022). Thus, in addition to the long-term EU budget, NextGenerationEU is a temporary tool designed to stimulate recovery and create a greener, more digital, and resilient Europe (European Commission, 2022), continuing to capitalise on the opportunities offered by globalisation. The fiscal and financial commitments made in this activity will have a lasting impact on the global economic direction, the recovery of losses caused by the COVID-19 pandemic being influenced by adaptability and efficiency in decision making (Ioan-Franc and Diamescu, 2021; Schwab and Sternfels, 2022). Similarly, the Web Economic Forum (WEF) emphasises the importance of adopting sustainable and inclusive solutions that consider, in the long-term, changes in socio-economic and political factors, which coincides with the vision of the Recovery Plan for Europe (Schwab and Sternfels, 2022; European Commission, 2022). Recommended public policies, obtained from the analysis of macroeconomic indicators, offer private entrepreneurs the opportunity to make optimal decisions for the evolution of their business (Păunică et al., 2021). To ensure stability and support the economic openness necessary for sustainable development, it is necessary to consider all aspects of resilience: risk reduction, the ability to absorb shocks, respectively recovery through adaptation and transformation (OECD, 2021). This study focuses on identifying innovative factors that ensure a sustainable process of resilience in a country's economy. The post-pandemic context requires new approaches to maintain stability within a global system based on agreed rules and to ensure sound governance, which is necessary for economic openness to create a predictable economic environment conducive to sustainable development (OECD, 2021). The main purpose of this research is to identify whether there is a relationship between resilience and globalisation and a country's ability to implement information technology and communication networks (ICT) to create a sustainable and competitive economy. Therefore, we analysed 27 European countries from this perspective in 2019, 2020 and 2021, using correlation and regression analysis. The results highlighted that in order to AE The Sustainability of Digital Networks and Globalisation, the Key to Resilience? 952 Amfiteatru Economic achieve resilience, globalisation and networks are necessary, the correlation between them being positive and strong. To achieve this objective, the data were processed and analysed using the specialised software packages SPSS, XLSTAT and VOSviewer. The paper is structured in three main sections. Section 1 presents a literature review and provides an overview of selective studies on globalisation, a country's ability to benefit from digital transformation and resilience, being dedicated to exploring the most relevant studies in the field. In Section 2, the methods and data used in the analysis are presented, with the main results being described and analysed in Section 3. The paper ends with the authors’ conclusions regarding the studied topic, as well as future research possibilities. 1. Review of the scientific literature Originally defined as the capacity to absorb disturbances with the possibility of returning to a functional state, today, the concept of resilience also includes aspects related to the possibilities of adapting to new realities (Walker, 2020; Ioan-Franc and Diamescu, 2021). Resilience, analysed from an organisational point of view, is often used to show how a national economy can return to the level before an economic shock, from the perspective of macroeconomic indicators. At the same time, the ability to return to an economic level as close as possible to the one existing before the shock is also supported by the potential of organisations to respond to negative impacts by minimising the effects of these changes (Marković, 2018). Entrepreneurial resilience is an important factor in building a sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystem using the three dimensions of resilience: resistance, ingenuity, and optimism (Ayala and Manzano, 2014). At the same time, as an important quality for entrepreneurs, resilience can be defined as the result of interactions between entrepreneurs and their environment (Vogus and Sutcliffe, 2007; Ayala and Manzano, 2014) and can make a major contribution to community recovery and enhanced social cohesion (Grube and Storr, 2018; Muñoz et al., 2020). At the same time, the dynamic capacity of resilience leads to the need to periodically assess the resilience of the supply chain (Pettit, Fiksel and Croxton, 2010; Datta, 2017). On the other hand, Kharrazi (2020) considers redundancy, diversity, and modularity essential characteristics that contribute to systemic resilience (Ringsmuth et al., 2022). An important effect of globalisation is the reduction of inequalities, both at the interstate and at the intra-state level. During the COVID-19 pandemic, this progress was slowed down, with restrictions imposed and isolation measures bringing differentiated damage, both at the individual level and in various sectors of activity (Narula and van der Straaten, 2020). This idea is also supported by Ciravegna and Michailova (2021), who, at the same time, consider that the world economy will not see a greater globalisation in the post- COVID-19 era, which is in contradiction with the statement of Contractor (2021), who supports a sharp evolution of globalisation in the post-pandemic period. In the case of a system, resilience is not always easy to identify and is affected by the interaction between the system and the type of shock suffered (Kharrazi et al., 2020; Ringsmuth et al., 2022). If we talk about the economic system, it can be considered a network characterised by all activities carried out by the economic organisations included in its composition (Chiriță, Ciurea and Nica, 2021). One of the main components of the economic system is the digital one, the development of digital entrepreneurship being a key Sustainable Development and Technological Challenges AE Vol. 25 • Special Issue No. 17 • November 2023 953 pillar for job creation and innovation which leads to economic growth (Antonizzi and Smuts, 2020). As innovation capacity is the main tool for increasing the level of competitiveness, it will be necessary to adopt government strategies that lead to the development of a sustainable and innovative society (Suciu and Petre, 2021). Additionally, the way in which digital trends influence the transformation of the business environment and the way in which they are associated with the resilience of the innovation system, in addition to entrepreneurial skills, make the development of digital entrepreneurship a prerequisite for sustainability (Satalkina and Steiner, 2020). This fact is consistent with the results obtained by Pînzaru et al. (2022), who identified an interdependence between digitisation and the drivers of sustainability adoption. Although, at the state and global level, digital inequalities existed even before the COVID-19 panic, they have now intensified further (Beaunoyer, Dupéré and Guitton, 2020; Silva et al., 2022), reducing the digital divide is a challenge for most states (Aissaoui, 2021). Thus, the benefits of the resulting information and communication technology offer a new perspective on the entrepreneurial ecosystem in a digital age (Elia, Margherita and Passiante, 2020). The concept of globalisation rose to popularity in the 1980s and 1990s, with resilience implying popular appeal and policy relevance so that allowing security objectives to shift, adapt, and according to media narrative, both in policy and the everyday effective (Brassett, Croft, and Vaughan-Williams, 2013). Gunasekaran, Rai and Griffin (2011) associated resilience with competitiveness of SMEs that are influenced by advances in operations strategies, technology, and globalisation. Although there are diverse existential challenges, the nation state proved to be resilient, in context of globalisation continuing to remain the main actor that provides major communication channels to work out projects of cooperation/coalitions, including alliances and treaties (Harshe, 2014). Financial globalisation has resulted in further exposure to external conditions, leading to financial sector modernisation, thus providing a source of further economic growth through the development of this sector and also through institutional development, thus contributing towards economic resilience building (Jankee, 2006). Even territories that have not shown vulnerability presented many of the effects of extreme events that today give rise to relief and rehabilitation programmes, being indicated that colonialism, development, and globalisation have reduced resilience, increasing exposure (Campbell, 2009). Detecting and characterising community structure is absolutely necessary when studying networked systems, understanding how community structure affects systemic resilience and stability. Dong et al. (2018) indicated that the connections among communities` influence resilience, highlighting the important effects that community structure has on network resilience. Gao, Barzel and Barabási (2016) studied resilience patterns in complex networks, the empirical results unveiling the network characteristics conducing to diminish resilience, thus offering ways to prevent the collapse of ecological, biological, or economic systems, and guiding the design of technological systems resilient to both internal failures and environmental changes (Gao, Barzel and Barabási, 2016; Lapatinas, Litina and Poulios, 2022). The network structure and network components, regardless of domain, can influence resilience concept thought changes and dynamics (Gao et al., 2015), the dynamical mechanism of the cascading failure can help us to design more resilient networks (Liu, Peng and Gao, 2015; Yuan, Aihara and Tanaka, 2017). AE The Sustainability of Digital Networks and Globalisation, the Key to Resilience? 954 Amfiteatru Economic Globalisation can be defined as a process of interconnection that creates a global information society, with ICT facilitating the emergence of a ‘network society’ based on the spatial nature of flows of finance, information, and knowledge (Castells, 1996; Castells, 2001). Globalisation is associated with four broad processes: mobility of capital; simultaneity; bypass; and pluralism (Kanter, 1995), Vickery (1996) reporting a link with networks, an increased number of network relations, and strategic alliances conducing to globalisation (Dunning, 1997). Håkanson and Dow (2012) highlighted that markets and Networks in international trade reduce distances regarding globalisation; the impact of geographic distance has increased markedly for homogenous goods, whereas for more differentiated goods it has decreased mildly. Otherwise, Kharrazi et al. (2015) indicated that secure and responsible consumption requires the diversification of both energy generation and energy imports, highlighting the role of resilience in global energy networks. System resilience significantly influences the network interconnectedness and modularity, depending on the network structure (Tu, Suweis and D’Odorico, 2019). The world is facing an increasing complexity, connectivity, and turbulence, thus multinational corporations recognised the need for resilience, the pathway to globalisation and outsourcing creating complex supply networks vulnerable to disruptions (Fiksel, Goodman and Hecht, 2014). Wei and Pan (2021) indicated that the information, transportation, and economic networks of cities exhibit a dense pattern of spatial distribution, the capacity of regions for resistance and recovery can be improved by strengthening the construction of emergency systems and risk prevention mechanisms. The main studies related to the FM Global Resilience Index - FM_GRI, the Network Readiness Index - NRI and the KOF Globalization Index - KOF_GI are highlighted in Figure no. 1. Figure no. 1. Principal studies on resilience, networks and globalisation Sustainable Development and Technological Challenges AE Vol. 25 • Special Issue No. 17 • November 2023 955 To highlight the most frequent words in the association of resilience with networks and globalisation, a bibliometric analysis was used based on 22 scientific articles selected from the academic platform Web of Science. To identify the most common words and the relationship between them, content analysis was used, considering a network of cooccurrences with a frequency of at least 3 times and a correlation degree greater than 0.5. The analysis was carried out using the VOSviewer program (Figure no. 2). The empirical analysis demonstrated that the most frequent words, from the full content of the selected articles – apart from the words using: “resilience”, “networks”, “globalisation” – are: “change”, “development”, “environment”, “impact”, “challenge”, “reliability”, “complexity” (Figure no. 2). The most common combinations in the most relevant studies in the field, using as threshold the value of 0.5 (Figure no. 2), are:  resilience-network-globalisation-impact-complexity-realiability-sustainability;  globalisation-risk-challenge-crisis-culture;  business-vulnerability-government-society-environment;  change-development-policy-productivity-interaction Figure no. 2. Word co-occurrence network in WOS publications Based on the previous theoretical considerations, in order to identify whether resilience is correlated with globalisation and a country's ability to benefit from digital transformation – if globalisation and digitalisation lead to resilience, the following hypotheses were created: AE The Sustainability of Digital Networks and Globalisation, the Key to Resilience? 956 Amfiteatru Economic H1: There is a strong link between globalisation and resilience in the case of European countries. H2: There is a strong link between digital networks and resilience in the case of European countries. H3: Globalisation and digital networks together lead to a better resilience. 2. Data and methodology The study of the relationship between globalisation, the development of digital networks, and innovative services and resilience was carried out on the basis of three composite indices (Table no. 1), determined at a global level, the values used in the analysis for European countries were recorded for the years 2019 (KOF_GI), 2020 (NRI), and 2021 (FM_GRI). Although there are no records for the same year, the analysis carried out better captures the researched topic, since the data used are complete for the countries considered, and the effects of globalisation and digitisation on resilience can be well quantified after a certain period. In addition to the immediate effects of digitisation and globalisation, there are also long-term effects that can be reflected in an economy’s ability to recover from a crisis, this study being the first analysis of all three concepts together. To identify a relationship between resilience, globalisation and the efficiency of the use of ICT by a state to increase competitiveness and well-being, it is necessary to use composite indicators, due to their characteristic of quantifying multidimensional concepts that cannot be measured directly because of their complexity (Oțoiu and a Grădinaru, 2018; Lindén et al., 2021). For the accuracy of the analysis, each indicator must have data for each country; thus, the most complete and recent available data were considered. In addition to the immediate effects of digitisation and globalisation, there are also long-term effects that can be reflected in an economy’s ability to recover from a crisis. The data are provided by KOF Swiss Economic Institute, FM GLOBAL, and Portulans Institute (Figure no. 5, Table no. 1). The component description of the indicators included in the analysis is presented in Table no. 1. Table no. 1. Variable’s description Variables Code Components Source FM Global Resilience Index FM_GRI Economic Factors Risk Quality Factors Supply Chain Factors FM GLOBAL (2021) Network Readiness NRI Technology People Governance Impact Portulans Institute (2020) KOF Globalisation Index KOF_GI Economic Globalisation Social Globalisation Political Globalisation KOF Swiss Economic Institute (2019) To characterise urban resilience, we used the FM Global Resilience Index (FM GRI), which best reflects the level of resilience (Figure no. 3). It is a composite measure Sustainable Development and Technological Challenges AE Vol. 25 • Special Issue No. 17 • November 2023 957 calculated at country level (it takes values from 0 - the lowest resistance to 100 - being the highest resistance) and includes three basic resilience factors: economic, risk quality, and the supply chain. Additionally, each factor represents the result of four basic factors. Figure no. 3. 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