International Journal of Innovation Management · 2025
How can organizations make digitalisation and sustainability reinforce each other in everyday work?
Mahringer, C. A. (2025). Twin transformation in action: Conceptualising the entanglement of digitalisation and sustainability in organisational routines. International Journal of Innovation Management, 29(5/6), Article 2540003. 10.1142/S1363919625400031
Organizations increasingly face two major transformations at the same time: they are becoming more digital while also being expected to become more sustainable. These developments are often discussed together as the Twin Transformation. Yet much of the debate remains at the level of strategies, capabilities, leadership, or business models, even though transformation ultimately has to become visible in what employees and managers actually do in their everyday work.
The paper therefore shifts attention from a bird’s-eye view of transformation to the routines through which organizational work is performed. It argues that digitalisation and sustainability should be understood as intertwined rather than as separate transformation programs. Digital technologies can shape more sustainable ways of working, while sustainability concerns can simultaneously reshape which technologies organizations adopt and how those technologies are used.
The paper addresses a central question: How do digitalisation and sustainability interact in everyday organizational routines, and how can these interactions generate momentum for broader organizational transformation?
This is a conceptual paper. It integrates research on Twin Transformation with research on organizational routines and technology-in-use to develop a process model of how digitalisation and sustainability become entangled in situated work. The routine perspective matters because it moves analysis closer to where transformation is enacted: in recurring activities such as business travel, purchasing, accounting, product development, and technology use. This allows the paper to explain how small changes in everyday work can accumulate and spill over across the organization.
Research increasingly acknowledges that organisations must undergo a transformation that simultaneously addresses digitalisation and sustainability, commonly referred to as the ‘Twin Transformation.’ However, much of the emerging literature on this topic adopts a high-level view, often overlooking the everyday organisational routines through which work is carried out in organisations. This conceptual paper argues that a more comprehensive understanding of the Twin Transformation can be achieved by focusing on organisational routines as loci where digitalisation and sustainability interact. To support this argument, the paper theorises three processes — pressuring, resourcing and inspiring — through which digitalisation and sustainability interact within and across routine performances. These processes have the potential to drive transformation when they spill over into other routines, creating momentum for fundamental change. By conceptualising the Twin Transformation as a continuous and situated process and by advancing understanding of the intertwined nature of digitalisation and sustainability, this paper contributes to research on the Twin Transformation. Additionally, the paper provides managerial implications to guide organisations through their own Twin Transformations.
The paper explains how digitalisation and sustainability can become mutually reinforcing through everyday organizational work.
Transformation is realized when people adopt and adapt digital technologies and sustainability-related actions in recurring work. This makes routines important loci of Twin Transformation and shifts attention from transformation plans toward the situated actions through which digitalisation and sustainability are enacted.
Pressuring describes how one realm orients change in the other. Resourcing captures how digital technologies can enable sustainable action and how sustainability can create new uses for technology. Inspiring explains how one realm opens possibilities for change in the other. Each process can operate in both directions.
The interaction of digitalisation and sustainability does not have to remain confined to one routine. When pressuring, resourcing, and inspiring spill over into other routines, they can trigger cascading changes across purchasing, accounting, marketing, product development, and other parts of the organization.
The paper advances Twin Transformation research by conceptualizing transformation as a continuous and situated process rather than only as a firm-level strategic program. It links digital transformation and sustainability research to the everyday actions through which organizational change accumulates over time.
It also theorizes digitalisation and sustainability as a duality. The two realms can pressure, resource, and inspire one another, which helps explain why their relationship cannot be reduced to digital technology simply serving sustainability goals. The spillover argument further connects micro-level changes in routines to broader organizational transformation.
Twin Transformation requires more than aligning high-level digital and sustainability strategies. Managers can work directly with everyday routines by asking how existing technologies affect sustainability and how sustainability goals might require technologies, actions, or routines to change.
The paper suggests concrete interventions such as innovation sprints, cross-departmental reflection sessions, experiments with AI or collaborative technologies, and performance metrics linked to Twin Transformation goals. Managers should also look for spillovers: a change in business travel, purchasing, accounting, or product development may create opportunities for transformation elsewhere in the organization.
