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The chapter sheds light on how top management teams (TMTs) across multinational firms tackle the ongoing disruptive digital transformation during the pandemic era. The chapter includes basic definitions and global and regional trends on data governance and digital transformation across multinational firms from advanced and emerging markets. Finally, it provides several case studies demonstrating the theoretical and practical applicability of how data governance and digital transformation emerged from top management team perspectives. The chapter outlines the importance of leadership and top management in dealing with emerging technologies and business processes across global firms.

The chapter explores the challenges in the financial education of the new generation under the influence of digital transformation, building awareness, and compliance with the new model of society. The rapid development of technology significantly influences our daily lives, thus making us look at the progress of various processes differently, thus facilitating the social and professional performance of subjects. The need for a comprehensive, fast, and logical personality is growing in a society that can analyse a set of different interconnections, draw logical conclusions, and assess risks. The impact of technology is particularly felt in educating future financiers, as accounting, financial analysis, and financial management decision-making have long been unthinkable without the skills to use various computer programmes, big data processing, and visualisation of financial information using the latest information technology tools. The survey was organised to collect data from student questionnaires. The questionnaire analysis allows for assessing students’ digital competences, advantages and drawbacks of the digitalisation process, and university challenges in the digital transformation process as well as detecting the areas that require additional attention to make digital transformation effective. Digital transformation significantly changes the ecosystem, and the level of students’ abilities and skills is also a variable. Therefore, it is important to identify the readiness of the participants in the higher education system for new challenges and to use the limited resources as efficiently as possible to prepare the financial specialists necessary for the development of society.

The current chapter deals with the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) integration issue that should contribute to the higher expected investment returns as different kinds of risk are managed in a better and more sufficient way. The goal is to study the ESG risks integration into the decision-making process and test the results. The research chapter intends to contribute to the existing discussion by evaluating some integration techniques. Following the development of the European Taxonomy, one can expect increased interest in integrating ESG risks into the financial forecast and asset valuation. The current chapter deals with Berger and UniCredit Bank’s (2010) proposal to include the ESG data as factors influencing the foretasted financial data in terms of direct costs (like energy, waste, water, and paper expenses; payments for sick leaves and employees’ turnover costs); externality costs (like CO₂ compliance costs) and opportunity costs (ESG provisions; expenses for board compensations). The chapter provides an overview of some integration approaches and discusses the idea of incorporating the ESG criteria into the stock valuation and portfolio management process. It is evident that the classical value investing approach is no more suitable. Nevertheless, the tested sample does not show significantly different results based on the backtesting. The research results could be interesting for authors preparing research on the field of sustainability and risk management as well as for portfolio managers considering the ESG integration to achieve the positive alpha.

Creating organisational resilience and creating a positive social impact is becoming a condition for sustainable business development. The adoption of digital technologies requires specific leadership characteristics to resolve complex societal challenges. The purpose of the research is to identify the critical strategic leadership characteristics for developing organisational resilience while creating social- and financial value. There is a research gap in strategic leadership, digital technologies, social impact, and organisational resilience studies which will be addressed in this research. The methodology embeds a critical literature review, complemented by bibliometric analysis. The adoption of digital technology is seen to be a key driver in the societal question and a tool to boost organisational resilience. Sensing, seizing, and driving digital adoption agenda as well as digital adoption are critical and require unique leadership characteristics where contextual ambidexterity was key to the strategic leader when building organisational resilience and creating social- and financial value. The research results can be used for identifying which characteristics strategic leaders must develop for digital technology adaptation to generate both a profit and positive social impact while boosting organisational resilience.

Intellectual capital (IC) shows a significant growing acceptance as a worthy topic of academic investigation and practical implication. The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of IC on firms' market value and financial performance.

The empirical data were drawn from a panel consisting of 96 Greek companies listed in the Athens Stock Exchange (ASE), from four different economic sectors, observed over the three‐year period of 2006 to 2008. Various regression models were examined in order to test the hypotheses included in the proposed conceptual framework.

Results failed to support most of the hypotheses; only concluding that there is a statistically significant relationship between human capital efficiency and financial performance. Despite the fact that IC is increasingly recognised as an important strategic asset for sustainable corporate competitive advantage, the results of the present study give rise to various arguments, criticism and further research on the subject.

The lack of available data for the appropriate analysis, the investigation of four sectors of economic activity and the relatively narrow three‐year period for data collection are the main limitations of the present study.

Results proved that, in the Greek business context, the development of human resources seems to be one of the most significant factors of economic success. Focusing on human capital should, therefore, be at the centre of the companies' attention.

The present study combines previous methodologies in order to investigate certain causal relationships considering the IC of Greek listed companies. The value of the paper is the empirical investigation of these relationships in the context of the Greek economy and the enrichment of the literature with another paper that follows the value‐added intellectual coefficient methodology for the measurement of IC.

The present study aims to investigate the impact of organizational capabilities in the successful implementation of e-business. More specifically, the study proposes a three-dimensional conceptual framework, including “organizational learning capabilities”, “knowledge management capabilities” and “organizational readiness”. Such a multidimensional approach has randomly been explored in the existing literature, making the examination of the proposed conceptual framework an interesting research topic.

The proposed conceptual framework was tested on a sample of Greek companies with an online involvement. Information System executives were used as key respondents. The final sample consisted of 213 companies. The reliability and the validity of the newly developed questionnaire were thoroughly examined. Empirical data were analyzed using the “structural equation modeling” technique.

The results of the study reveal that “training availability”, “knowledge level” and “knowledge sharing” are the most significant factors for successfully implementing e-business. Moreover, “firm size” seems to be another important determinant. On the other hand, “technical expertise”, “knowledge accumulation” and “knowledge application” were not found to have a statistically significant impact on the implementation of e-business.

A limitation stemming from the implemented methodology is the use of self-report scales to measure the constructs of the proposed model. Moreover, the present paper lacks a longitudinal approach, as it is cross-sectional and provides a static picture of e-business implementation.

The paper makes an analytical effort to point out areas that companies should emphasize to successfully implement e-business and, therefore, harvest its potential benefits. Certain practical implications are offered in the final part of the paper.

The paper proposes an enhanced conceptual framework that examines vital issues concerning the successful implementation of e-business, thus providing valuable outcomes for decision-makers and academics. Moreover, the results of the study may be generalized in other developed countries whose economy faces similar significant challenges as Greece (e.g. Spain, Italy, Portugal, Ireland, etc.).

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems enhance productivity and working quality by offering integration, standardization and simplification of multiple business transactions. The present study seeks to introduce a conceptual framework that investigates the way that human inputs (top management, users, external consultants) are linked to communication effectiveness, conflict resolution and knowledge transfer in the ERP consulting process, as well as the effects of these factors on ERP system effective implementation.

The examination of the proposed conceptual framework was made with the use of a newly developed questionnaire. The questionnaire was distributed to a group of 361 Greek companies that have implemented an ERP system. Information technology (IT) managers were selected as the key respondents of the questionnaire. After the completion of the four month research period (September to December 2008), 108 usable questionnaires were returned (response rate=31 percent approximately). The empirical data were analyzed using the structural equation modelling technique (Lisrel 8.74).

The main findings of the empirical study can be summarized in the following categories: the assistance provided by external consultants during the ERP implementation process is essential; knowledge transfer is an extremely significant factor for ERP system success; knowledge transfer concerning technical aspects of ERP systems is more important than effective handling of communication, as well as conflict resolution among organizational members; the role of top management support seems to be of less importance that the one provided by users.

The present study is limited by the poor definition of its population (due to lack of available data) and the relatively small size of the sample.

The paper points out areas that adopting companies should emphasize in order to successfully implement an ERP system and, therefore, harvest its potential benefits.

The paper proposes an enhanced conceptual framework that examines vital issues concerning ERP system effective implementation, thus, providing valuable outcomes for decision makers and academics. The originality of the paper lies in its three dimensional approach.