Huseyn Mammadov (p), Maria Plotnikova, Isidoro Romero(p)

Maissa Obay

Digital technologies are transforming most sectors around the world, and many small and medium enterprises (SMEs) will have to adapt to these changes in order to survive and grow. Therefore, adoption and implementation of digital technologies will be major issues for many SMEs and territories in the decades ahead (OECD, 2020; Reuschke, Mason, and Syrett, 2021). Advances in the digitalisation process may be be affected by spatial conditions, and, in this respect, contribute to the emergence of a spatial digital divide between urban and rural areas, as has often been suggested (Labrianidis and Kalogeressis, 2006; Prieger, 2013; Gerli and Whalley, 2021). From this perspective, the current paper particularly analyses the impact of the level of urbanisation on the digital transformation process of SMEs in Spain. Our empirical study uses a data set of 841 SMEs obtained from a 2021 representative survey of SMEs in Spain. Our investigation shows the positive effect of the urbanisation level on the digital transformation process, the latter proxied by digital product innovation introduced by the SMEs. The study also explores some of the channels through which this positive effect operates. The results obtained have direct policy implications. Government policy should be directed to compensate for the disadvantages that SMEs experience in rural areas and act as catalysts for the building and development of digital ecosystems in which SMEs can participate successfully in their specific environments.

Gianluca Risi (p)

Isidoro Romero

Nowadays, we live in a "Digital Age"; if in the past robotics and automation were the bugbears in front of which the fear of losing jobs materialized, today digital technologies seem to be the main suspect to bring unprecedented changes to our society - the real "disruptive" innovation. For the first time, such a major innovation is not only labor saving but also very complementary, thus polarizing the labor market and increasing inequality among groups of workers. Moreover, this impact is not equally distributed across the territory; on the contrary - like most innovations -, it is more concentrated in urban centers, because of cumulative processes and agglomeration economies effects, as much as the different speed of penetration with which digitalization hits cities and “non-cities”. Hence, space does not simply "host" an unequal distribution of resources but plays an active role in promoting inequalities (cities become a “multiplier” of inequalities).
Within this conceptual framework, this paper pursues a threefold scope: firstly, we reframe the debate on technical change around digitalization rather than robotization, empirically building a new taxonomy of groups of workers divided by the tasks performed (cognitive, manual, routine and non-routine) in Italian NUTS3 regions; secondly, we conceptually define the role of territories in promoting wage inequalities under the pressure of new digital technologies, and we empirically test our expectations; lastly, thanks to the merge of multiple datasets from Inapp (ICP) and Istat (ICT and RFL), we estimate the impact of digital technologies (proxied by cloud computing) on wages distribution across different groups of workers among Italian provinces in the 2012-2019 time span.

Maissa Obay (p)

Gianluca Risi

Italy's struggle with digitalization, particularly in e-government, highlights a notable digital divide between the North and South. Recent case studies have emphasized the critical role of stakeholders in implementing Information Systems (IS), underscoring the need for inclusive strategies in e-government service delivery. To better understand the factors associated with the barriers to e-government implementation in Italy from different perspectives, we employed the stakeholder approach, mainly focusing on government agencies. Employing a Qmethodology approach, we explore stakeholders' perceptions of e-government issues. Our aim is to gain insight into how local authorities view these challenges and uncover the obstacles encountered by public administration. While Italy grapples with a notable digital divide between the North and South, our findings reveal a more nuanced picture. Although a general divide exists, stakeholders' perceptions of the challenges of digital transition do not
significantly differ between the two regions. Instead, we uncover a digital divide within the government itself, primarily attributed to a lack of digital skills and capacity among public employees. This internal divide poses a significant barrier to effective e-government implementation and underscores the need for targeted training and development programs to bridge the skills gap.