Everyday and business digitalization, as the dated figures place them

On 10 December 2023, Jeong Yeon-hun submitted a bachelor’s thesis in management information at Hanyang Cyber University, with Kim Hyeong-do as advisor, on the digital business model, focused on human-resource management, from the viewpoint of digital transformation and the business environment. Quickly changing technology, the essay says, has a deep effect on business as well. A keyword that draws notice is the digital, or digitalization. As internet networks, Wi-Fi, and smartphones have spread, digitalization is leading a wide change among people, households, firms, and the public. Everyday online shopping and payment, and contactless ordering in a restaurant, are named as typical examples. The 2017 ITU Measuring the Information Society Report places the number of internet users worldwide as nearly tripling from 2005 to 2017, with mobile-bandwidth subscribers also rising rapidly. As of 2019, more than half of the world’s population is placed as using the internet, and about 900 million people as connected through social media.

The COVID period, left as the essay places it, brought everyday digitalization still further forward, and supported a contactless way of living to prevent infection. Those changes remain deep even as the situation recovers, and are accelerating further digitalization. Digital technology has become essential in carrying on a business. OECD material, as the essay cites it for 2018, places nearly 80 percent of firms in OECD countries as operating a website or a homepage, and half of those as using that space to fulfill orders, so that survival is difficult without digital technology. In 1990, ICT was the core driver of economic conversion, with communications, satellites, wireless, and cable still a foundation. More recent technologies — blockchain, three-dimensional printing, the internet of things, the cloud, automation and robotics, artificial intelligence, and data analysis — are assessed as having a high potential to overturn a firm’s structure and strategy, because they change the value of intangible activity and because they can exist electronically, apart from a physical asset.

What the terms are taken to mean, and why the derived ones stay vague

Various studies use slightly different terms for the change these technologies lead, which causes confusion. A 2022 ETRI paper by Song Yeong-geun, Park An-seon, and Sim Jin-bo recites differing definitions, including Lee Seok-jun and others in 2021, the National Information Society Agency, Dalenogare and others in 2018, and the World Economic Forum in 2017. ETRI classifies three terms: digitization, converting analog data into a binary language of 0 and 1; digitalization, implementing in society with digital technology; and digital transformation, change following digitalization, such as creating new value. Research is placed as beginning overseas in the early 1950s and increasing from the late 1990s, and as increasing rapidly in Korea from 2017. This writing uses digitalization and digital transformation in ETRI’s sense: continuous change across society and the industrial system due to the introduction and use of digital technology, a concept that evolves in stages and includes the first two terms.

Derived terms such as the digital economy and the digital firm still have many vague points. Bukht and Heeks, in 2017, evaluate the digital economy at 5 percent of world output; UNCTAD, in 2019, estimated 15.5 percent. New platform and data firms have a relatively clear form, but firms such as Uber and Airbnb break older boundaries, crossing transport or lodging and digital services, which makes classification hard. Data are still insufficient, and platforms such as YouTube or Facebook, crossing borders, make accurate collection difficult; the speed of change also means the concepts themselves will go on changing. A definition cannot be too narrow, nor too broad. This writing will analyze the phenomenon from the viewpoint of management information. Findings from the thesis’s listed papers on digital business-model innovation, digital human-resource management, and employees’ digital competency are not filled in the extract beyond the opening, and this page does not add them. This page stays with the 2005-to-2017, 2018, and 2019 figures as they are placed, and with the COVID period as the essay places it, and does not add later official digitalization rates. The same Korean report, at fuller length, is on CampusDown.

Sources

1. On 10 December 2023, Jeong Yeon-hun of the Department of Management Information at Hanyang Cyber University submitted a bachelor’s thesis, with Kim Hyeong-do as advisor. The subject is the digital business model, centered on human-resource management; the subtitle is, from the viewpoint of digital transformation and the business environment. Together with technology that is changing and advancing quickly in modern society, this change is having a great effect on the business environment as well. New technologies make more innovative and efficient methods possible in a great many firms, and for this reason many firms are trying to develop their existing business models further. A keyword that draws notice among these movements is the digital, or digitalization. In most countries, as internet communications networks and Wi-Fi and smartphones have been spread, digitalization or digital transformation is leading a wide-ranging change in every sector: people, households, firms, the public, and so on. Digital technology is bearing in each different way on various economic actors, such as people, firms, and governments. People are using digital technology in everyday life, and everyday online shopping and payment in our society, or contactless ordering in a restaurant, can be called typical examples. In fact, the number of internet users increased nearly three times worldwide in 2017 compared with 2005, and the number of mobile-bandwidth subscribers is also increasing rapidly. ITU, 2017, Measuring the Information Society Report, volume 1, pages 11–17. As of 2019, more than half of the world’s population is using the internet, and about 900 million people are connected through social media. This shows how important a role digital technology is playing across our lives overall. The recently occurred COVID phenomenon brought digitalization in everyday life still further forward, and supported being able to carry on everyday life in a contactless way in order to prevent virus infection. These changes remain deep in our society even as the COVID situation recovers, and are accelerating further digitalization ahead. Just as digital technology changes an individual’s life, this is also having a large effect on business. Digital technology has become an essential element in carrying on a business, to the point that a large part of our economy is now arising in electronic commerce, and this can be corroborated by OECD material according to which, as of 2018, nearly 80 percent of firms in OECD countries were operating a website or a homepage. And half of these were fulfilling orders by making use of this online space, so that an environment has now come in which a firm’s survival becomes difficult without the use of digital technology. The lexical meaning of digital is to express the changing physical quantities of the world we live in as the figures 0 or 1, following the Oxford definition as cited. Analog, the contrasting concept, is that which has expressed a physical quantity continuously. For example, in measuring the amount of an electric current, analog technology expresses this as 0.59 A, and for the same value digital technology recognizes this as a value between 0 and 1. In this way, digital technology, the essay says, makes it possible to transmit and share information quickly and raises ordinary people’s access to information. It also has the advantage of being able to store and manage vast data efficiently. Digital technology brings a large change to firms, the producers of the economic structure, and to people, the consumers, and some innovative technologies show a force of a degree that shakes the existing economic order. In 1990, information and communications technology, ICT, was the core driving force of economic conversion, and major technologies such as communications, satellites, wireless, and electric cable brought a large change. These technologies played a great role in the early development of the digital economy, and in modern society as well they still form a foundation across the economy overall. Recently, technologies that have evolved a step further on the basis of this information and communications technology are appearing. Blockchain, three-dimensional printing, the internet of things, cloud computing, automation and robotics, artificial intelligence, data analysis, and the like can be called typical examples. These technologies are assessed as technologies that have a high potential of a degree that can overturn a firm’s structure and strategy. There are various reasons why digital technologies exert a still greater influence on a firm than they do otherwise, but they can be seen largely as two. The first is the point that digital technology changes the value of business activity. Unlike before, digital technology has given considerable value to intangible business activities such as software, databases, and research and design, and has brought change to traditional manufacturing-centered firm activity. Also, in manufacturing activity as well, it automates simple, repetitive production work, and comes to bear even on identifying customer demand on the basis of data and on deciding production samples and products. The second is that digital technology does not require a physical asset. In the traditional economy, technology was a manner that appeared combined with some physical object such as a machine or a device, but digital technology exists electronically, separated from a physical object, as with data and 5G services and the like, and maintains its value. This can overturn in an innovative way the existing structure of a firm’s sales of goods and services, and for this reason it can be seen that many firms have a high interest in digital technology. In referring to the change that the digital technologies mentioned earlier lead, various studies are using slightly different meanings and terms, and this causes confusion and gives rise to difficulty in setting the range of related research and development. In fact, in overseas and Korean literature the term digital transformation is being defined differently, as in the following table. Lee Seok-jun and others, 2021: a wide activity in which various activities a person performs come to change and achieve innovation by making use of digital technology as a tool. National Information Society Agency: rearranging industrial structure centered on business models based on digital technologies such as artificial intelligence and the cloud. Dalenogare et al., 2018: change in market order and industrial structure induced directly or indirectly by introducing and applying digital technology at the production site. World Economic Forum, 2017: including management activity responding to environmental change promoted by the development and spread of new digital technologies, and a capability of creating business models and organizational innovation that improve the performance of using digital technology. The Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute analyzed overseas and Korean documents that studied the subject of digitalization or digital transformation, and classified the related terms and meanings largely into the following three. Also, research on digital transformation began overseas from the early 1950s and increased steadily from the late 1990s, while in Korea it appeared to have increased rapidly from 2017, confirming that in related research the overseas research started still earlier. Digitization: computerization that converts analog data expressed as continuous real numbers into a binary language (0 and 1). Digitalization: the process of implementing in society by making use of digital technology. Digital transformation: change following digitalization, such as creating new value. Song Yeong-geun, Park An-seon, and Sim Jin-bo, 2022, “The concept of digital transformation and the range of digital-transformation R&D,” ETRI, Technology Policy Trend 2022-02, page 7, recitation. The Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute defined digital transformation not as a temporary phenomenon but as a concept that continually evolves and expands in stages, including digitization and digitalization, as “continuous change across society and the industrial system overall due to the introduction and use of digital technology,” and in this writing digitalization and digital transformation are used in that sense. Even though digital technologies have already become general in our society and are regarded as important to a degree that overturns the business environment, research on this is still assessed as being at an early stage. In other words, because the effect digital technology has on our society is wide and deep, various derived terms such as digitalization, digital transformation, the digital economy, and the digital firm have appeared and are being used, yet, unlike the definition of digital, which has been clearly established, the concepts of these derived terms still have many vague points. Academically as well, a clear definition of the relevant concept differs a little by researcher, and accordingly each study is reaching a different conclusion about the influence digital technology brings or about estimates of the scale of a digital economy carried on with digital technology. One example of this phenomenon occurring is that of the scale of digital firms or of the digital economy. It can be called typical that one study evaluated the digital economy at 5 percent of world output, while the UNCTAD institution estimated this as far as 15.5 percent. Bukht, R., and Heeks, R., 2017, “Defining, Conceptualising and Measuring the Digital Economy”; UNCTAD, 2019, Digital Economy Report 2019, page 48. This phenomenon is due to the point that digital technology is not only causing new forms of firm to appear, but is also breaking down the previously clear boundaries of firm activity. Typical of business forms newly appeared through digital technology are platform firms that connect sellers and buyers, or data-related firms that collect and analyze data, and the like. These firms have a relatively clear business form, and they are recognized as digital firms and as part of the digital economy. But in cases where an existing business form and digital technology are joined, the situation differs. Previously there were large classes such as services, agriculture, and manufacturing, and under them subclasses — within services, lodging, transport, wholesale and retail, education, and the like, and in the case of manufacturing, machine manufacturing, medical-device manufacturing, and so on. But Uber and Airbnb, which have appeared recently, are typical digital firms that break these boundaries: in Uber’s case it carries on business across transport and digital services, and Airbnb across lodging and digital services. This phenomenon makes it difficult to give a clear answer as to how digital firms are to be classified, and as to how far something is to be classified as a digital firm. Another reason that defining digital-related terms is difficult may be that, because digital technology and the effects and phenomena concerning it are relatively new, related data have not yet been collected sufficiently. Not only that, the character of digital technology also sometimes makes collecting the related data itself still more difficult. For example, online platform businesses such as YouTube or Facebook take place across borders regardless of physical geography, and therefore make collecting accurate material and studying it difficult. Meanwhile, the speed at which digital technology develops is also acting as a difficulty for related research. Digital technology is changing society and the economy at a very fast speed of a level not seen in earlier examples, and it is becoming difficult to predict quickly the effects such change brings. This means, in other words, that the concepts of digital technology and of the digital economy will go on changing continually together with technical development ahead as well. Therefore, in defining the concept of the digital, too narrow a range cannot be set, and at the same time it is so that defining this too broadly and comprehensively can increase vagueness in carrying out related research on the digital phenomenon. For this reason, drawing out a definition that meets these two opposed demands at the same time is becoming a still more challenging task. In analyzing a business environment that is becoming digital, a vast range of research is possible according to the viewpoint from which one looks at the phenomenon, such as a humanities approach in which moral and ethical sides are stressed, or an economics viewpoint that considers the welfare of society, and each study offers its own value and meaning. Among these, this writing intends to analyze the relevant phenomenon from the viewpoint of management information. The thesis lists as papers it will take up work on digital business-model innovation toward construct clarity and future research directions, the relationship between digital human-resource management and organizational performance, and employees’ digital competency development in the construction and automotive industrial sectors; those findings are not filled in the extract beyond the opening, and this page does not add them. This page stays with the 2005-to-2017, 2018, and 2019 figures as they are placed, and with the COVID period as the essay places it, and does not add later official digitalization rates.

Last updated: 14 November 2026