The Implications of Digitization for Sustainable Competitiveness

The results of previous studies conducted at the European level highlight the low level of Eastern European countries, which are predominantly in the second half of the Digital Competitiveness (DC) ranking, and the situation is similar for Sustainable Competitiveness (SC). On these premises, the purpose of this research was set to analyze the influence of the four dimensions of the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) of Eastern European countries from 2014-2022 on the SC index selected on the basis of the same criteria. The achievement of this aim is supported by setting the following objectives: objective 1: identification of the interdependence relationship between the digital economy and the sustainable economy; objective 2: bibliometric analysis of the literature indexed on the Web of Science platform of the most relevant studies dealing with the four dimensions of the DESI: "connectivity", "human capital", "digital technology integration" and "digital public services"; objective 3: determination of the influence of the DESI dimensions on CS through econometric analysis. The results of the research are materialised in the confirmation of the link between digitisation and sustainability based on bibliometric and econometric analysis. The usefulness of the results lies in the fact that this study represents a contribution to the literature in terms of investigating the relationship between DESI dimensions and CS index in Eastern European countries.