The Implementation of Digital Technologies and Companies' Efficiency: Empirical Research of Russian Manufacturing Enterprises

This study is devoted to the analysis of the implementation of digital technologies, as well as the determination of their interconnection with the efficiency of enterprises on the basis of an empirical study of manufacturing enterprises in Russia. The purpose of this study is to determine the factors that are associated with the intensity of implementation of digital technologies in business, as well as to assess the relationship between the use of these technologies and the efficiency of enterprises. During the study, such tasks were set as consideration of the typification of digital technologies, analysis of their use in Russia and in other countries; assessment of the current state of the level of digitalization and the main problems of introducing digital technologies at manufacturing enterprises in Russia; studying the theoretical foundations of researching digital technologies, as well as their impact on the efficiency of enterprises, conducting a review of foreign and Russian empirical studies on this topic; formulation of the main hypotheses of the study, substantiation of the methodology of empirical analysis, testing of hypotheses using the econometric analysis methods. The object of the research are the enterprises of the manufacturing industry in Russia, while the subject of the research is the factors presumably interrelated with the introduction of digital technologies at the enterprises of the manufacturing industry in Russia. The study used data from a survey of 1,716 manufacturing enterprises in Russia, collected during the project "Factors of Competitiveness and Growth of Russian Industrial Enterprises", carried out in 2018 as part of the HSE Program of Fundamental Research. As a result of the study, it was revealed that in the manufacturing industry, small and medium-sized enterprises quite noticeably differ from large ones in the number of digital technologies used. It was also noted that for small and medium-sized enterprises, the volume of revenue, belonging to the production of electrical equipment acts as a significant positive predictor of digitalization, and the older age of the head of the company was a negative factor. At the same time, among large enterprises, the listed factors are not significant, however, in the group of large enterprises, export trade can be considered a significant positive predictor of digitalization. Among the unexpected results, one can single out the fact that no significant positive relationship was found between the level of digitalization and the profitability of the enterprise. Rather, on the contrary, for a group of small and medium-sized enterprises, there is evidence of a negative relationship between the number of implemented digital technologies and the company's profitability.