The role of digital technologies in firms' performance: A panel data study on family firms and SMEs

Abstract

In the current big data era, digital technologies play a vital role for firms to improve their business and economic growth. Considering the firm type and the firm size, this study explores how digital technologies impact their performance in the financial and employment perspectives. The performance variables are presented at the capital, profit, debt-paying, and development levels from Total Economy Database TM and the Amadeus database for European companies from 2008 and 2019, in a panel data analysis. In this study, the sample only consists of good companies that generate profit. The results demonstrate that digital technologies positively affect shareholders' funds to a greater degree for non-family firms and non-SMEs. They make a positively larger impact on the return on capital employed by non-family and non- SMEs. Digital technologies would increase the solvency ratio for firms, except for SMEs. Finally, they make a positively larger impact on the operating revenue for firms that are nonfamily and non-SMEs, while the opposite is true for family firms and SMEs. Scientific research on digital technologies has significant managerial importance and competitiveness connecting family firms and SMEs. The research makes contributions for the relevant literature on digital technologies and offers four perspectives affecting performances. The findings benefit scholars, managers, and policymakers of family firms and SMEs.