Jonathan Liu

Digital transformation has had an unprecedented influence on all sectors of business over the last decade. We are now entering an era characterized by the extensive digital transformation of businesses, society, and consumers. Therefore, digital transformation has become a pivotal focus for organizations across various sectors in recent years. Despite differing scholarly perspectives on the concept and elements of digital transformation, a consensus exists that it significantly impacts consumer decisions and necessitates organizational adaptation. Recent challenges such as the COVID‐19 pandemic have further accelerated the need for digital transformation and its effects on consumers. This necessitates an editorial perspective on this most important topic to establish future research agenda encompassing the various dimensions of digital transformation. The purpose of this editorial perspective is to review research on digital transformation from a multidisciplinary viewpoint and provide insights into several key domains—Internet‐of‐Things, social media, mobile apps, artificial intelligence, augmented and virtual reality, the metaverse, and corporate digital responsibility—that are poised to fuel the pace of digital transformation. Each domain is analyzed through a lens of introduction, role, importance, multifaceted impact, and conclusions. Future research directions are suggested.

Caring for the environment has become everyone’s responsibility because of our significant negative impact. Considering this, companies are spending a substantial amount on corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities not only as part of corporate citizenship but also to enhance corporate image. Using a fixed-effect model on 2,260 companies’ annual data from 2012 to 2017, we analyze whether female board members influence CSR performance. The results indicate that the proportion of female board directors (PFBD) in Chinese firms is relatively small compared with the male. In other words, the boards members are predominantly male. The fixed effects model indicates that both the number and proportion of female directors are significant in influencing CSR performance. Surprisingly, we note that the average age of female board directors has a significant and negative impact on CSR performance. The results also indicate that the education level of the female director does play a significant role in CSR performance. This demonstrates that firms need to recruit educated board directors and with a right mix of age.