Digitalisation of Spanish companies: An EU comparison
Fecha: enero 2023
Pilar Rivera-Torres and Vicente Salas-Fumás
Corporate digitalisation
SEFO, Spanish and International Economic & Financial Outlook, V. 12 N.º 1 (January 2023)
The European Company Survey (ECS) 2019 data show that business digitalisation is a multidimensional phenomenon marked by heterogeneous patterns. Differences in digitalisation at the firm level across Europe are attributable to country factors (productivity differences), sector–market factors (technology and demand) and company factors (size, competitive advantage, organisational capital). Public policies designed to support digitalisation across Europe need to take these factors into consideration. In contrast
to the Spanish economy’s relatively low productivity levels, overall, Spanish companies are relatively highly digitalised. In fact, they rank among the highest in the EU. However, a high percentage of Spanish companies use digital technology to control worker performance (relative to alternative uses in companies in more productive countries) and have relatively low levels of organisational capital (complementary to digital capital). This, together with the lower incidence of delegation among the Spanish companies, could mean that they are missing out on the opportunity created by their investments in digitalisation to lift productivity.