Conference Overview

From July 20 to July 21, 2024, the International Workshop on Dual Transition of Firms Towards SDGs was held with a hybrid way at Zhejiang University. The workshop was hosted by the School of Management at Zhejiang University and the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at University College London. It aims to enhance international academic cooperation and communication on digital transition and green transition, including the innovation systems, innovation policies, industrial policies, corporate strategies, and global value chains, towards the achievement of United Nations Sustainable Development Goals

The conference was co-chaired by Associate Professor Jun JIN from School of Management, Zhejiang University, and Professor Julia Korosteleva from School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London. Around 74 scholars from the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, Sweden and China attended the workshop including 17 keynote speeches and 5 presentations of doctoral session, on the place and online. The workshop was supported by the ZJU-UCL collaboration

Conference Content

On July 20, at first, Professor Can HUANG, Associate Dean of School of Management, Zhejiang University, and Associate Professor Randolph Luca Bruno from University College London at the opening ceremony, gave a warmly welcome to all online and offline participants. Then, the 17 keynote speeches were conducted, focusing on the basic theories of dual/twin transition, the smart manufacturing and sustainable development of industries, and corporate transition and innovation management in the AI era.

Basic Theories of Dual/Twin Transition

Professor Roberta Rabellotti, an expert on global innovation and sustainability, from the University of Pavia, Italy, delivered a keynote speech on Digital and Green Transitions: Opportunities and Challenges for Europe and China. Based on the patent data analyses, she discussed the definitions, classifications, and measurement criteria of technologies for digital and green transition, and analysed the capabilities and technological advantages of China, the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, and Japan in this field.

Professor Xiangdong CHEN from Beihang University, a notable scholar in intellectual property management, presented on Conceptual Arguments on Dual / Twin Economic Transition ---from Innovation study perspective. He made a critical and clear analyses of conceptual arguments on dual/twin transition from the perspective of innovation management research. He proposed the importance of theoretical construction and terminology consistency in the research.

Associate Professor Elizabeth Yi Wang from the University of Leeds, UK is a well-known scholar in sustainable development and internationalization. In her keynote speech The Green Agenda and How Can Firms Act on It - The Role of Innovation and Internationalization, she emphasized the necessary of firms to coordinate the benefits of market, government, and society, and the strategic alignment of green technologies adoption and internationalization during the process of dual/twin transition.

Smart Manufacturing and Sustainable Development of Industries

Professor Yongyi SHOU, an expert in sustainable supply chain management from School of Management, Zhejiang University, gave a keynote speech on To Complete or Terminate Smart Manufacturing Projects: A Prospect Theory Perspective. He used prospect theory to analyze the impact of complexity of smart manufacturers projects on the manufacturer decision, and proposed five theoretical propositions on completion or termination of smart manufacturing projects.

Associate Professor Xiaodan YU from the University of Nottingham Ningbo China shared her research Catching Up and Leap Forward in the Era of Fourth Revolution: Evidence from Chinese Firms. This research built a matched enterprise patent dataset to analyze 4IR (an abbreviation of fourth industrial revolution) patent activities, identified the correlations between 4IR technologies and other categories of technologies, and indicated path dependence in internal knowledge creation of firms.

Associate Professor Ju LIU from Malmö University, Sweden, gave a talk on Digital Transformation in the Real Estate Industry for Sustainable Urban Development: From Theoretical Model to Practical Toolkits. The research explored the challenges and responses of digital transformation and sustainability in the real estate industry, revealed the reality of no clear digital transformation strategies in the real estate industry, and proposed a multidimensional analysis framework for digital transformation management in the real estate industry.

Professor Yunfei SHAO from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China and her doctoral student Yanping CHEN presented Enterprise Innovation Ecosystems Driven by Digital and Green Transformation. Their research on the corporate innovation ecosystem driven by digital and green transitions, based on cases of Haier Group and others, discussed how firms conducted twin transition strategies in stages, and identified the key challenges in the progress to reduce process complexity and coordination costs.

Mr. Yangang CHEN, the director of Sustainable Development Department, China International Marine Containers (Group) Co.,Ltd. (CIMC), shared ESG Practice of CIMC in the workshop. He introduced innovations and practices for ESG in CIMC, and discussed how CIMC align international ESG standards with local businesses in overseas market.

Corporate Transition and Innovation Management in the AI Era

Professor Jin CHEN, a well-known scholar in innovation management from Tsinghua University, China, gave a keynote speech on The Dual Transition: Perspective on Chinese Firms. He proposed routines for Chinese firms to employ dual/twin transitions, such as building a smart enterprise and managing carbon footprint. Several detail cases were discussed to show Chinese practices in twin transition and to verify the research propositions.

Professor Jiang YU from Institutes of Science and Development, Chinese Academy of Sciences delivered a talk titled Understanding mechanisms of digital transformation of leading giants: An institutional perspective. He explored the mechanisms of digital transformation in state-owned enterprises from an institutional perspective. China Mobile and China Unicom were taken as examples to analyze the impacts of technological attractiveness and institutional pressure on digital transition.

Associate Professor Nan JIA from the University of Southern California is one of leading researcher on field of AI+ management research, such as impact of artificial intelligence in management and management research. In her keynote speech, AI and Organizational Innovation: Challenges and Opportunities, she discussed the impact of artificial intelligence on employees’ workplaces, and suggested the need to integrate human intelligence and AI to leverage the advantage of AI, and potential integration problem could be avoided through organizational innovation.

Associate Professor Randolph Luca Bruno from University College London, UK, examined labor productivity differences among European business clusters, and analyzed the complementarities between digital capabilities and human capital in his speech Innovation Ecosystems, Complementarities and Productivity in Europe.

Doctoral Paper Development Workshop

The doctoral paper development workshop was held in the evening of July 20. Chen Tailun and Li Jingwen from Zhejiang University, Zhonghe Wang and Jianqing Lin from University College London, and He Yunxin from Nanjing University of Finance and Economics, shared their working papers. Professors gave comments to their papers.

Conclusion

Attracting scholars from the world, this international workshop focused on the practice and challenges of dual/twin transitions towards UN SDGs, in order to provide comments and suggestions to Chinese high-quality development, implementation of green development and digital economy strategies, as well as to set up a global cross-discipline collaboration network for the future research and practices on the dual/twin transition in the world. In addition, the workshop is going to provide a strong theoretical and practical support to achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

This workshop was also one of collaborative activities and achievements of the joint project ‘Dual Transition of Manufacturing Firms in Europe and China: towards Inclusive and Sustainable Innovation and Production’, supported by ZJU-UCL Strategic Partnership Program 2024. This is the second workshop of this project. The workshop will further cooperate in doctoral training and research collaboration in dual/twin transition in the future.

Brief Introduction of the ZJU-UCL Strategic Partnership Project ‘The Dual transition of manufacturing firms in Europe and China: towards inclusive and sustainable innovation and production’. The project jointly conducted by University College London and Zhejiang University aims to explore the dual transition (digitalization and greening) towards inclusive and sustainable innovation and production from a multi-level perspective. Associate Professor Jin Jun from the School of Management at Zhejiang University and Professor Julia Korosteleva from the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at University College London are the co-leaders of this cooperative research project. The core of this cooperative research is to carry out mutual cooperation and exchange between the two parties and to facilitate doctoral student exchanges. Starting in January 2024, the project has established a mechanism for interactive exchanges between doctoral students, and has formed a preliminary draft of a cooperative doctoral thesis. A virtual workshop has already organized in the April 2024. Project partners have found some interesting topics for further collaboration and paper development.