Digitalization: A Concept Easier to Talk about than to Understand

Pasi Hellsten

and Annamaija Paunu

Information and Knowledge Management Unit in Faculty of Management and Business, Tampere University, Finland

Keywords: Digitalization, Concept, Definition, Decision-making.

Abstract: Many organizations have come to rely on digitalization to solve many issues. Today knowledge is an equal

production factor besides the traditional ones; capital, natural resources, and work. Thus, there is an ever-

growing need for getting the information in, sorted, and used. Digitalization is widely used phrase with many

definitions, quite often case-specifically. We show that the existing definitions are not very precise and

through two studies investigating executed digitalization initiatives we point out that the reality does not al-

ways respect earlier findings. Through the comparison we present questions to be answered in later research.

However, business environments and technologies are often unique and thus not all recent issues are taken

into consideration. We take business intelligence (BI) as a framework to draw a picture of organizational

processes and to give context for the features to be taken into account when discussing digitalization, ie.

technological side and the human oriented aspects.

1 INTRODUCTION

There is little news in stating that organizations are

facing data and information overflow (Schwarzkopf,

2019; Virkus et al., 2017). Information and commu-

nications technology (ICT), while helping the organ-

izations in their tasks, is also creating vast amounts of

data all the time (Hellsten and Myllärniemi, 2019).

The amount of data generated is growing at a stagger-

ing rate

. The question is not whether one has the ac-

cess to the data and information needed for the deci-

sion-making, for example, but to distinguish what is

relevant and how it is to be dealt with.

In public discussion and in public statements dig-

italization is sometimes seen as a silver bullet that can

solve a multitude of problems and answer a plethora

of challenges, each unique in its context. Similar to

one another perhaps, but not the same. One is able to

read news about digitalization being a solution to

match a growing need of improved service offering;

services that are easier to use for the end user but also

cheaper to produce for the offering side (Hellsten &

Pekkola 2018). But what exactly is meant by it, the

digitalization? What are the prerequisites for it? The

phenomenon and the discussion surrounding it, re-

minds us, and indeed it is somewhat similar to the

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7602-1690

IBM states that 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created

massive hype of the Big Data some years ago (eg.

Gandomi and Haider, 2015; Scott, 2019). The Big

Data was supposed to solve many problems in organ-

izational context, but still there seems to be only few

practical solutions that really work in utilizing the

vast masses of data or the complex technologies that

have emerged. In order for us to make better use of

these newer ways and possibilities of working, a

closer scrutiny around the big picture is needed.

There is a wide variety of tools and solutions to

aid in decision making and operations. Some of these

are overlapping, some just labeled differently depend-

ing on the viewpoint and angle to the phenomenon

under scrutiny. To view briefly back in time, some

decades ago CRM (customer relationship manage-

ment) required the personnel to become more active

towards the customers and to collect data of them to

be later used in making better business. (Buttle, 2001)

As years went by, the concept of business intelligence

(BI) emerged to enable the broader considerations of

the business environment in order to ensure the right-

fulness of decision-making (Shollo and Galliers,

2016). After that the ‘Big data’ became the buzzword

widening the observations and possible data sources

to really make the best of the vast data sources and

newer technologies (De Mauro et al., 2015). After

daily. http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/bigdata/

what-is-big-data.html

226

Hellsten, P. and Paunu, A.

Digitalization: A Concept Easier to Talk about than to Understand.

DOI: 10.5220/0010145302260233

In Proceedings of the 12th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (IC3K 2020) - Volume 3: KMIS, pages 226-233

ISBN: 978-989-758-474-9

that the developments gave us ‘data science’ with its

tall order of qualifications and requirements, stretch-

ing broadly over various areas in organizations oper-

ation (Davenport, 2020). Notable is, that the sur-

roundings for these developments as well as the aides

and toolkits which were used during all these devel-

opments were digital. Obviously. Of course, also the

users are there too to learn newer ways of working,

and indeed thinking, to use the tools and implement

the development schemes. Digitalization has so far

proved to be one possible, even if a broad term to

cover these areas.

Even though the BI, for example, as a discipline,

and various models in that area, are not very old

, al-

ready during their lifespan the business environment

has undergone changes and developments as have the

tools being used to accomplish the tasks. This may

cause the need for updated thinking in this area, con-

sidering both the technology-oriented and human-ori-

ented approach. The ever-evolving environment, de-

veloped during recent years, has features that affect

our thinking. Phenomena like newer and continuously

changing technologies, even further networked busi-

nesses, Internet of Things, big and open data, and just

the information overflow in general are constantly

transforming the operations. For example, social me-

dia as part of BI can provide improvements but also

bring up new challenges; regarding both technologies

and personnel, ie. how to accomplish the tasks with

the existing technologies and should this not be opti-

mal then how to develop better ones (Ketonen-Oksi

et al., 2016; Xue et al., 2018).

Organizations are faced in an unprecedented way

with streams of data flooding in from various media

and channels at an accelerating rate. It has become in-

creasingly apparent that companies that learn to har-

ness the power of data sources, most often digital in-

formation systems, benefit significantly (Grant and

Preston 2018), yet many organizations, smaller busi-

nesses in particular, find it difficult to define how data

can be used to drive business growth or improve man-

agement of operations and manage risks. Organiza-

tions of various sizes struggle to see the practical rel-

evance and possibilities of using all the data sources

available to them. Simultaneously they may be miss-

ing out on real possibilities to improve their decision-

making, overall performance and enhance their sus-

tainability (Grant and Preston, 2019; Oxford Eco-

nomics 2018). This has also to do with the adoption

of digital tools, which are there in abundance and the

versatility of their use.

As to the origins of the phrase, there are more than one

version. According to one, the phrase BI was introduced in

In this paper we study how digitalization is de-

fined in the literature and how it is built and devel-

oped over time, ie. what did it mean in the early days

and how has the concept evolved. Furthermore, the

more theoretical viewpoint is good as it offers a

framework, but how does it meet the challenges of re-

ality? In order to answer this, we compare the find-

ings of two separate studies in regard how digitaliza-

tion is perceived with the findings from the literature.

Intuitively we may feel certain that there is more

than one way to understand digitalization, ie. we need

to find out how do actual stakeholders understand and

perceive the digitalization and how these issues are

addressed in real life cases. Are these concepts taken

from the literature and executed in practice the same

or even converging? Our objective is to show that

closer definition of the features and procedures and

analysis of the effects and requirements are needed in

addition to further research, before the full scale of

benefits of this newer way of working can be

achieved.

Digitalization, ie. according to one of the simpler

definitions to create and execute “changes associated

with the application of digital technology in all as-

pects of human society” (Stolterman and Fors, 2004,

p. 23) covers quite a few of the organizational en-

deavours, if not all. Changes and trends described

above affect the whole organization. Digitalization

must be connected to all business processes of an or-

ganization, because only by this connection it is able

to draw high quality information from everyday op-

erations and information products formed from this

empirical material to bring value to decision-making.

Thus, it becomes a question of angle and view-

point to define more closely what exactly is under

scrutiny. In this paper we strive to remain on a higher

abstractive level to bring out interesting issues to be

looked into in more detail in the future.

Digitalization has most often to do with organiza-

tions operational data and information. Having said

that, one literary definition for business intelligence

is; a systematic process for knowingly collecting and

analyzing data and information from all possible

sources to produce insights of the competitive envi-

ronment, business trends and daily operations (Mur-

phy, 2016). These insights aim to support decisions

that promote organization’s operational objectives.

We feel that this definition serves quite nicely not

only when the contemporary businesses are consid-

ered but also the operations in the public sector if un-

derstood correctly and a bit more broadly. In addition

late nineties by IBM as they connected it with their database

and data warehouse solutions.

Digitalization: A Concept Easier to Talk about than to Understand

227

to the previous features, BI includes the assessment

of both the quality of the information sources and the

significance of the insights (Brody, 2008; Fleisher

and Bensoussan, 2015). This brings the solutions and

tools of the trade into the picture as there are a variety

of things more or less related to processing data and

information into knowledge and insights.

As for digitalization, literature presents defini-

tions for it. They all are based on certain interpreta-

tions and presumptions of their makers. The models

mirror findings of cases of the time the studies were

conducted in including the aspects felt relevant at the

time.

Based on both the literature and empirical find-

ings our objective is to present definitions for the con-

cept of digitalization and a variety of areas to be taken

into account when thinking of studying, or indeed im-

plementing a business-related solution under the flag

of digitalization. We bring forward challenges in

these areas and execution of the actions in these areas

in organizations. We also introduce some possible

ways in responding to the challenges and their out-

comes in the studied cases.

Even if already a number of these introduced areas

and the challenges thereof are being studied in vari-

ous institutions, we still want to pinpoint some ave-

nues for further research.

The paper is organized as follows: after introduc-

tion, definitions for the concept of digitalization are

presented in section two. In the section three, findings

of two studies are explained and their meanings are

further analyzed in section four in which the theme is

also discussed. The fifth section summarizes the con-

clusions of the paper with a number of avenues to fur-

ther the research in a few possible areas regarding the

digitalization.

2 DIGITALIZATION; NOTIONS

AND RELATED RESEARCH

Digitalization is dealing with the organizations data

and information resources with dedicated tools and

techniques. However, before we go any further, it is

crucial to introduce another phrase; digitization. Dig-

itization is shortly put the process in which ‘older’,

analog data gets transformed into digital for further

use (eg. Bloomberg, 2018; Brennen and Kreiss, 2016;

Clivaz, n.d.). To show the organizational context of

data and information handling to be digitalized a ge-

neric model is introduced below in Figure 1. The

model of five stages is based on multiple sources

(Choo, 2002; Fleisher and Bensoussan, 2015; Pirt-

timäki, 2007). The framework takes into account the

two views: refining information to knowledge and re-

fining data masses to information products. Pirttimäki

(2007) in particular shows that both the order and the

actual being of stages are dependent on the organiza-

tion and the operation under scrutiny. The goal of the

process is to produce organization-specific target-ori-

ented intelligence solutions instead of producing gen-

eral business information or knowledge (ibid.).

Figure 2: Information process of BI (Myllärniemi et al.,

2016).

Basically, the process, any operation, starts with

defining the information needs. It needs a clear state-

ment of the key intelligence topics and more specifi-

cally the questions concerning the current issues,

problems, or trends (Pirttimäki, 2007). The stated in-

formation needs dictate the information sources that

act as a primary foundation for gathering data or in-

formation after having first been evaluated. This

means managing multiple sources and finally collect-

ing the information. The collected information is

stored in organization’s repositories.

Frameworks part ‘processing’ includes analysis

and evaluation of the collected information, and re-

producing it in a compact, readable form, i.e. infor-

mation products. During the process, the collected in-

formation is evaluated and combined with the exist-

ing information, e.g. structured information of exter-

nal environment is connected to the expertise of em-

ployees. This is where modern tools and techniques

come in handy. However, the mere existence of infor-

mation and the presence of information products is

not enough. Dissemination is about sharing the

knowledge and insights between the users. Equally a

part in which digitalization may prove to be great as-

set. The results need to be communicated to the right

recipient, at the right time and by using most suitable

tools. In the final stage, using or utilizing, the infor-

mation, it is used in operational problem solving and

KMIS 2020 - 12th International Conference on Knowledge Management and Information Systems

228

organizational decision-making. Using information,

and indeed knowledge, creates understanding as well

as further information needs, and by subsequently ad-

justing of the operation accordingly, the cycle starts

over. To promote digitalization efforts in organiza-

tions, it is crucial to acknowledge, design, implement,

and use BI through an organized approach of concep-

tualizing, planning, executing, and auditing (Grandhi

and Chugh, 2013).

Digitalization, by definition to create and execute

“changes associated with the application of digital

technology in all aspects of human society” (Stolter-

man and Fors, 2004, p. 23), may indeed change the

way employees interact with one another, their places

of employment, and their actual objectives and goals

of working as well as to how they perform their tasks

(Parviainen et al., 2017). A fundamental question is

whether this may be made into an ‘everyone wins’

type of situation, giving employees larger personal

freedom and enable creativity at work, while simulta-

neously increasing productivity in organizations, and

providing citizens with improved (self-)services. If

this is indeed the case, how can it be achieved, what

kind of support does it take to make this happen?

There is a really wide range of features as possible

targets for digitalization in all walks of life, not only

in work life of people (Gray and Rumpe, 2015).

Sometimes the border between the professional and

private lives is blurred and the newer technologies are

actually part of this, as the hobbies and domestic af-

fairs converge towards one’s working day, eg. when

one uses one’s work hours and computer to run do-

mestic errands.

Gartner defines digitalization with a more busi-

ness-oriented focus in ‘Gartner’s Information Tech-

nology Glossary’ as digitalization is seen to be “the

use of digital technologies to change a business model

and provide new revenue and value-producing oppor-

tunities; it is the process of moving to a digital busi-

ness.” (Gartner, n.d.; Gray and Rumpe, 2015). In this

definition change is again an integral part, something

is changing and this is not only considering the tech-

nological aspect, but the human side is included. This

definition widens the relationships between different

operations and businesses, in addition to business and

administrations, and the essential relationship to cus-

tomers. An objective is to execute digitalization in

such a manner that there is a clear relationship be-

tween the services offered by businesses and the ac-

tual needs of users and essentially customers.

If a more detailed definition of the organizational

proceedings concerning the tasks from the digitaliza-

tion’s point of view is needed, the business intelli-

gence (BI) offers one worthy of looking at. BI has

been studied and used by scholars and professionals

to describe the process that produces information

products for various levels of decision-making (Brijs,

2016; Intezari and Gressel, 2017). BI may be ob-

served too as an umbrella-like concept under which

one combines different tools, applications and meth-

ods (Turban et al., 2008). Terms differ due to the dif-

ferent sourcing of information (external – internal),

scope of information collecting (narrow – broad), the

information viewpoint (technological – conceptual),

or even because of its geographical location (cf.

Fleisher and Bensoussan, 2015; Pirttimäki, 2007).

Common for all approaches is to data processing and

information refining to form and to use them in more

meaningful way. Therefore, BI may be described as a

framework for refining data to information products,

information products to knowledge to be used in op-

erations and decision-making.

One main objective, or process or even tool, is to

systematically derive knowledge and insights from

organizational data and information to support deci-

sion-making (Brody, 2008; Fleisher and Bensoussan,

2015). Knowledge, both tacit and explicit, in this con-

text refers to the outcome of human actions that take

place e.g. in decision-making situations (Smith,

2001). Knowledge is based on information combined

with experiences. It is acquired from information,

which in turn is processed from data (Choo, 2002).

Decision makers strive at these meaningful insights in

order to better make sense of proceedings and ulti-

mately to add value to the organization.

3 THE DIGITALIZATION IN

CASE STUDIES

In order to respond to the ever growing demand for

better and improved services and to meet the expec-

tations of the customers both private and public sector

organizations have launched various digitalization

and smart city initiatives (Bakıcı et al., 2013;

Denhardt and Denhardt, 2015; Taylor Buck and

While, 2017). Our examples cover a bit of both. Our

first case is a case in which a smart city program was

initiated, introduced, and implemented to and for var-

ious service areas of public administration in form of

numerous experiments in the city services. The goal

of the experiments was to find out whether the emerg-

ing service innovations could be later applied and up-

scaled to permanent service offerings of the city ad-

ministration to enhance the life of citizens. (Hellsten

& Pekkola, 2019) An additional target for the experi-

menting was to develop the overall attitude to more

Digitalization: A Concept Easier to Talk about than to Understand

229

positive towards experimenting with digitality and

later digitalization. The other case observes a web-

based open source service enabling digital applica-

tions of construction and other permits related to in-

frastructure. The service was developed as a part of

Action Program on eServices and eDemocracy

(SADe program) set by the Ministry of Finance in

Finland (Helander et al. 2019). The program’s objec-

tive was to provide interoperable, high-quality public

sector services via digital channels to create savings,

improve cost-efficiency, and generate benefits not

only to citizens, businesses, organizations but also to

local and government authorities.

The Digiprogram was a part of a smart city initi-

ative. The larger initiative was originated by the city’s

top management of which the CIO is a member of.

The Digiprogram originated from the city’s CIO’s of-

fice where also the management of the program

would be. A program manager was appointed along a

few other staff members at the CIO’s office to form

the basic organization, but the main focus would be

elsewhere, ie. in the service areas. As one may as-

sume, some heads of service areas proved to be more

eager, some at least willing, to take part in the initia-

tive. The Digiprogram committed a number of city

employees from the areas to act as experimenting pro-

ject managers, another number of people to be their

supportive development managers. There were also

steering groups to oversee and guide the endeavors in

each service area involved.

The program itself consisted of numerous exper-

iments the various service areas of public administra-

tion in the city. The ideas for the experiments arose

from the service areas as there was the best compre-

hension on in which tasks and how the digitalization

could help the most. The objective of these experi-

ments was to find out if there could be service inno-

vations that may be later applied to permanent service

offerings of the city administration (Hellsten and Pek-

kola, 2019).

In addition to the experimenting, the general atti-

tude towards developing the city’s administrative op-

eration through digitalization was regarded as an ad-

ditional target for development. The undertaken ex-

periments varied by their nature. They came in vari-

ous shapes and sizes; some were less ambitious (ie.

how to do daily conferencing more effectively by us-

ing e-conferencing tools, such as Skype, more effec-

tively), some did almost ground-breaking rethinking

in formulating their whole operational process anew.

The city employees involved were ordinary civil

servants of the service areas. Perhaps with an excep-

tion that they were possibly more eager to participate

in such initiative (as at least some of them volunteered

to this program) than average person in the city’s pay-

roll. Their technical capabilities were not necessarily

always top-notch, but their attitude was the key.

The other case, Lupapiste is a web-based open

source service that enables digital application of con-

struction permits and other permits related to infra-

structure. Lupapiste was a sub-project in the larger

program coordinated by Ministry of Environment.

Solita Inc. was chosen as a service provider for Lupa-

piste after a competitive bidding. The pioneering mu-

nicipalities operated as co-developers for Lupapiste

service, later during the evolution of the service the

ownership was transferred to Evolta Inc. a spin-off

company from Solita Inc (Helander et al., 2020).

Currently approximately 60 % of Finland’s mu-

nicipalities with about 100.000 users use Lupapiste

service (“Lupapiste” 12.06.2020). We conducted 16

interviews with corporate representatives operating in

construction, city planning, architecture and electric

engineering whilst studying the case. The interview-

ees regularly use Lupapiste service in their work to

apply for various permits in various fields (architec-

ture, electric engineering etc.) and in different munic-

ipalities in Finland. The overall user experience was

positive and the interviewees felt that the service has

eased the application process of different permits.

4 THE COMPARISON OF THE

THEORETICAL APPROACH

AND PRACTISE

Organizations’ ability to use digitalization in opera-

tion is based on users’ personal characteristics and or-

ganizations’ culture and way of working. Our studies,

in addition to previously introduced literature, indi-

cate that bases of digitalization should stem from

business processes and information systems and con-

nected to personnel.

Top management is one main source of origin for

digitalization, but technologies are used at almost

every level of organizations. Problem formulation,

development initiation is not only top management’s

responsibility. Similarly, continuous feedback and

active updating of information needs on all levels of

operation improves the quality of information prod-

ucts and makes knowledge processing more fluent.

Based on our studies, people in organizations use

quite often their personal inference skills to define de-

velopment needs and gather information inde-

pendently from relevant sources. The information

needs are based on subject-matter requirements and

situation-determined contingencies (Choo, 2002)..

KMIS 2020 - 12th International Conference on Knowledge Management and Information Systems

230

Developments both in business environment as well

as in internal operations would need to be considered

in advance. Methodicalness is required in addition to

a sort of free thinking to enable the best outcome from

these types of initiatives. We acknowledge the need

to integrate these strains of thought, newer aspects

and requirements, to the centric business models and

thus recognize a need to construct a more innovative

approach to the business processes and digitalization.

The studies showed that personnel are one of the

most important factors. Organizations have faced dif-

ficulties in considering and collecting information

from personnel. The multiplicity and variety of tech-

nologies, thus possible innovations make it necessary

for an organization to build newer forms and ways of

scrutinizing their operations. In addition, as the rele-

vant information may as well come from people or

from social media it is notable that information gath-

ering is not solely a technical phase in the process.

Obviously sometimes the ‘client’ is able to define

his/her ideas better and some other times less well.

The bottom line is that the organization committing

the personnel to an initiative is able to do better and

more successful projects to anticipate the needed de-

velopments to business needs set by the organiza-

tional strategy and the ever-changing business envi-

ronment.

To sum up the Digiprogram case, the program

aimed at clarifying whether it would be possible to

create innovations providing interoperable, high-

quality public sector services via digital channels to

improve cost-efficiency, create savings, and generate

benefits. As beneficiaries may regarded everyone,

from citizens, to businesses, to organizations and to

local and government authorities. All these stakehold-

ers need new solutions that are easier to use for the

end user but also cheaper to produce and use for the

offering side (Helander et al., 2020; Hellsten and Pek-

kola, 2020).

The Lupapiste service was introduced to the users

through small information seminars held usually by

the service provider and the community after which

the service was to be implemented. Even though the

usage of Lupapiste service is in fact compulsory to

various clients, companies and individuals, the user

experience was favorable and adaption of the services

was considered a positive development. The difficul-

ties arose when taking a closer look to the instructions

and regulations of each municipality. Every munici-

pality has their own instructions and even the imple-

mentation of the services is in some municipalities

limited to some parts of the services, although the ser-

vice is used in the hole country. Thus, the parties op-

erating in multiple parts of the country faced chal-

lenges as the procedures were different. More uni-

formity and clarity of the possibilities and advantages

of the service should be made visible and transparent

to the municipalities and comprehensive instructions

for the whole field needed be made.

5 CONCLUSIONS

Digitalization is a part of any today’s organization’s

actions. The working practices and processes in

which data and information are refined into a more

meaningful knowledge in order to support decision-

making are all digital. The process itself has various

variables and stages that make the process compli-

cated and each time unique. This complexity is

caused by the fact that the information needs of the

people and processes change continuously, sources

for information are not limited to organizations’ in-

ternal sources but vary and used tools, ie. technolo-

gies, are more and more sophisticated and more de-

manding for their users.

It is obvious that investing in digitalization organ-

izations may gain benefits, like better quality of infor-

mation, faster decision-making and deeper under-

standing of business environment. However, not

every organization has the same identical situation.

Organizations’ operational maturity and size do have

an influence. Our studies targeted rather large organ-

izational entities and operations and the results are

notable at some level concerning organizations that

digitalize their operation regardless their size.

However, this presents one of the limitations of

this paper, it is a case study of two rather large-scale

operations. The results are hardly generalizable, but

they do give directions where to target further scru-

tiny. Similarly, the longitudinal approach would give

more depth to the studies.

Organizations may take advantage of the digitali-

zation in various ways, for example, they may use it

just to get a better grip of their overall standing, to

report what is their current state of affairs. Attention

needs to be directed besides applications towards the

human side too, to processes and the employees. The

insights from the benchmarking in this work can as-

sist in making better and more informed decisions,

which is also the fundamental purpose of BI thinking

(Fleisher and Bensoussan, 2015; Pirttimäki, 2007;

Thierauf, 2001; Vuori and Okkonen, 2012).

Organizations’ employees on all levels possess in-

dividual knowledge and expertise that needs to be in-

cluded in the insights regarding the operation and its

relationship to digitalization. This further highlights

Digitalization: A Concept Easier to Talk about than to Understand

231

the need to consider members of the organization as

a relevant source of information. Seems that there are

few studies delving into the formulation of these fac-

tors, ie. the people and their digital capabilities, but

also the attitude. In Finland the organizations have

PC’s, laptops and tablets, yet the skillsets of their us-

ers differ. Not yet are all employees on the same level

when their technological savviness is concerned. To

broaden the thought, not all countries may boast with

similar technological wellbeing, ie. connections,

hardware, software. This certainly would merit more

research.

Innovation creation is yet another such issues that

is not equally distributed. There are people and organ-

izations that are more innovative than others. There

are university courses regarding the theme, but we

feel that more research is needed to really fathom,

whether this could ensure evenly distributed innova-

tive possibilities.

For example, an expert is likely to form a compre-

hensive understanding of the problem at hand and is-

sues related to it. Sharing this knowledge is essential

in order to give the best possible description of reality

for the planners, designers, and decision-makers.

However, articulating tacit knowledge is not always

an easy task as there are several challenges (eg. Hal-

din-Herrgard, 2000; Riege, 2005).

In this paper, we tackled this challenging issue by

presenting some definitions of digitalization and

comparing them to the findings of two cases in which

digitalization was introduced and implemented. Our

goal was to present notions of the definitions and to

point out some focal issues needing to be covered in

order to address these issues in organizational context

to answer to modern environment’s requirements. We

also propose some avenues for further research to

clarify emerging angles and viewpoints.

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