This article examines the implications of adopting a socio-technical perspective on the design and implementation of GovTech solutions. To observe the phenomenon, it adopts a case study approach focusing on the WiseTown solution and its City Digital Twin (CDT), developed by the Italian company TeamDev. The article investigates how integrating social factors, such as urban governance, with technical elements, like data analysis and modeling, can enhance the conceptualization, design, and implementation of user-centric, data-driven digital solutions as part of a broader digital transformation strategy. The article explores an Italian best practice that is developing four dimensions of the GovTech socio-technical framework: Governance Structures, Institutional Arrangements, User and Context Understanding, and Technological Development. It critically examines and discusses the challenges and opportunities associated with the adoption of CDTs and their impact on public policy implementation. The analysis is centered on two main aspects that emerged from the case study: data integration and sharing within CDTs, and the social implications associated with data usage for decision-making. Ultimately, the article explores the role of stakeholder collaboration (public-private partnerships) and the creation of innovation ecosystems—GovTech ecosystem in this specific case—to inform and steer policymaking through and beyond the adoption of CDTs.

Indonesia’s banking sector faces digital transformation challenges, with mobile banking growth of 52% projected for 2025, while digital literacy gaps (49.68% financial literacy) and cultural barriers threaten workforce engagement. This study investigates how Indonesian bank leaders foster meaningful work during digital transformation by examining technology factors, workforce readiness, and growth acceleration strategies within Otoritas Jasa Keuangan regulatory oversight and collectivist cultural contexts. Using qualitative methodology, in-depth interviews were conducted with 10 senior executives across 8 Indonesian banks representing government-owned, private, foreign, and digital institutions between December 2022 and February 2023. Data analysis followed the Gioia methodology, progressing from first-order concepts to theoretical themes and aggregate dimensions. The findings reveal six critical leadership practices enabling meaningful work creation: agile leadership promoting experimentation and psychological safety, tech-forward leadership integrating AI strategically, emotional intelligence managing virtual teams, recognition systems celebrating innovation, regulatory–ethical balance maintaining compliance while enabling innovation, and co-creation approaches involving customers. These practices operate across micro (individual), meso (team), and macro (organizational) levels, requiring sophisticated leadership orchestration rather than simple technology adoption. The study contributes theoretically by extending the human–individual–technology–organization–process framework for Indonesian contexts, refining meaningful work theory for digital environments, and developing an integrated leadership typology. Practically, the research provides evidence-based frameworks for banking leaders and transformation officers implementing human-centered digital transformation that preserves relationship-oriented values while enabling technological innovation within regulatory frameworks.

Digital transformation presents a crucial strategic imperative for family businesses seeking to maintain competitiveness and long-term viability. The academic literature reveals divergent perspectives on how family businesses approach digital transformation initiatives. This study adopts a socioemotional wealth perspective to examine the relationship between family ownership and digital transformation. The research specifically investigates how family formal business networks and next-generation dispersion moderate this relationship. Analysis of panel data from Chinese listed family firms between 2016 and 2020 reveals that family ownership negatively influences digital transformation efforts. However, this negative effect diminishes when family firms participate in formal business networks or involve multiple next-generation members in leadership positions. These findings yield important theoretical contributions regarding the intricate relationships between family dynamics and technological advancement. The research also provides practical insights for family business leaders navigating digital transformation challenges. This study advances understanding of how different dimensions of socioemotional wealth shape family firms’ strategic responses to technological change.

Status information from avionics systems is typically transmitted to airlines, but aircraft cabin systems remain largely disconnected and frequently reliant on manual, paper-based logbooks for defect recording. This results in error-prone processes that compromise data consistency and complicate maintenance planning. Digitalisation offers solutions to these challenges by enabling predictive maintenance, real-time monitoring and streamlined data sharing, improving operational reliability and efficiency. However, developing such systems is inherently complex due to operational constraints and stringent safety and security regulations. Model-based Systems Engineering (MBSE) effectively manages complexity, provide standardised system visualisation and enhance multidisciplinary communication. From a methodological perspective, approaches from literature suitable for addressing aviation maintenance systems were selected and enhanced with allocation techniques and subsequently applied to create system models for both current and digitalised aircraft cabins. This paper showcases MBSE’s relevance to develop digitalised aircraft cabin systems by using the Systems Modeling Language (SysML) enabling stakeholders to visualise system architectures and to make better-informed design decisions. The analysis of the presented SysML models highlights the error-prone structure of current non-digitalised aircraft cabin systems while illustrating new use cases unlocked by digitalisation. A model-based comparison underscores the improved efficiency, reliability and predictive capabilities achieved through digital transformation. This study demonstrates that MBSE provides qualitative advantages in system development by enhancing stakeholder collaboration, clarifying complex system architectures, and providing actionable insights into system behaviour and improvements.

This study delves into the intricate relationship between chief executive officers' (CEOs') experiences of poverty and the digital transformation of their firms. Employing comprehensive data collection on CEOs' birthplaces and leveraging advanced text analytics to quantify digitalization, our analysis encompasses a wide array of listed companies in China. The findings reveal that CEOs' impoverished experiences exert a detrimental influence on their firms' digital transformation efforts, primarily due to a lack of motivation and social resources necessary for such initiatives. However, this adverse effect can be ameliorated when CEOs gain access to substantial social resources in later life. Our conclusions are robust, supported by rigorous testing, and underscore not only the impact of CEOs' early-life poverty on corporate digitalization but also the potential for overcoming these challenges through the acquisition of external social resources and connections in adulthood. This study contributes significantly to existing literature and offers practical implications for enhancing corporate digital transformation strategies.

As the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and other international organizations (IOs) are undergoing significant digital transformation and operate in an increasingly digitalized environment, questions as to how they can continue to ensure their information security are becoming more acute. Legal tools to protect IOs from harm in the digital age are central in this regard, alongside technical and organizational measures. This article focuses on one specific legal tool that can be used to foster IOs’ information security, namely legal interpretations of the concept of inviolability. Specifically, the article explores how the Agreement on the ICRC’s privileges and immunities in Luxembourg interprets the scope of the concept of inviolability, and the obligations arising under it.

Research in digital transformation has focused on the challenges, determinants, or influencing resources, tools, and capabilities that enhance successful performance, innovation, competitive advantage, and internationalization. This paper discusses the process of digital transformation in the context of the footwear industry in Portugal, which is an interesting cluster of small and medium enterprises with a reported turnaround from traditional manufacturing targeting the domestic market to an innovative industry highly focused on export. The authors analyzed five important footwear companies ‘Made in Portugal’. The results show different stages of digital transformation, different levels of digital leadership, and different digital capabilities. The heterogeneous stage of digital maturity found has implications in the desired common positioning of the clustering-based brand ‘Portuguese Shoes’. The paper offers guidance for companies to align with the digital transformation requirements and respond to the global digital challenges, which can be transferred to other clustering industries and geographies.