Digital–Green Capability Co-evolution in India’s Steel Industry: A Multi-Case Study
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.69980/jaes.v22i1s.184Keywords:
Digital maturity, Decarbonization, Steel industry, Dynamic capabilities, Industry 4.0,Sustainability transitionAbstract
The steel industry of the world is facing digital as well as decarbonization pressures that are “analytically analyzed separately but operationally inseparable.” The process of steel production is still among the most carbon-intensive industrial processes and the digital technologies like artificial intelligence, predictive maintenance, digital twins, and integrated operations centers are restructuring the process control of the capital-intensive manufacturing. This paper evaluates the question on whether digital maturity is merely a functional efficiency enhancer of whether or not it is an enabling infrastructure to environmental governance and low-carbon technological transition. The research examines the role of the digital technological affordances in the production of the operational stabilization and energy visibility along with how organizational governance converts the visibility to sustainability performance and how structural and institutional constraints moderate the rate at which digital-green capability is integrated with the goal of achieving sustainability through a qualitative multi-case study of four large Indian steel manufacturers and 45 semi-structured interviews triangulated with documentary evidence. The results show that there is a sequence of dynamics. The digital affordances reduce the production volatility and build granular energy transparency; the governance transforms the transparency to performance discipline; and structural constraints determine the time and scope of experiment. The stacking of capabilities comes up with the increase of digital maturity, which enhances the absorptive capacity of sustainability transition, thus able to model hydrogen-readiness and experiment on carbon.Digital and decarbonization trajectories do not evolve independently but form mutually reinforcing capability architecture shaping competitiveness in climate-constrained markets.
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