In the era of digital transformation, businesses must innovate and adapt to sustain a competitive edge. This dynamic environment compels a reevaluation of traditional management practices, highlighting the need for highly flexible systems. Flexibility, defined as the ability to adapt organizational resources, processes, and strategies in response to environmental changes such as rapid technological advancements, is crucial. Our systematic review of 47 studies investigates how digital transformation influences performance measurement systems across various industries and global contexts. We found that digital transformation fosters the dynamism and adaptability of these systems. This study integrates strategic, organizational, and information systems flexibility concepts that are essential for effective adaptation and resilience. Our findings underscore the shifts towards decision-making agility, inclusivity, and sustainability, stressing the significant role of human resources in adapting to digital imperatives. We advocate for a comprehensive approach that fosters digital literacy, upholds ethical standards, promotes continuous skill development, and enhances strategic adaptability. Practical implications suggest integrating digital technologies into performance strategies, utilizing real-time metrics for agile decision-making and emphasizing ethical and sustainable practices to improve transparency and stakeholder trust. These strategies are crucial for optimizing performance in the digital age.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyse the concepts of sustainability, responsibility and ethics focussing on their links and differences, also to understand how companies move respectively in these field; to understand how companies sometimes move away from the basic and deep meaning of these concepts, landing in a merely utilitarian sphere of personal advantage where ethics, instead of being an irreplaceable and essential stronghold, is found to be a fiction or just an instrument. Design/methodology/approach: The methodology used assumes a theoretical critical approach and, based on the vast literature on the items, is based on a conceptual analysis of the themes of sustainability, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and ethics and of the behaviour that companies can adopt in the three contexts. A critical approach to these issues and concepts can effectively help us to understand how companies are responding to external demands and to the challenges of responsibility and sustainability, which are becoming increasingly pressing. Findings: Ethics, sustainability, CSR and social and environmental reporting are distinct constructs with different meanings but linked by important conceptual and operational relationships. Research limitations/implications: The results of the research are the consequence of the application of a critical approach based on a theoretical analysis of the concepts under study. It would be interesting to support the results achieved with empirical research studies. Practical implications: This conceptual path helps scholars and companies themselves to understand the difference between the three key concepts analysed. Only by understanding the basic meaning will it be possible to really make one’s own and pursue it in the correct way. Social implications: Nowadays, the authors are overwhelmed by these three concepts which are used as synonyms and incorrectly. This leads to confusion and misunderstandings. Knowledge of the characteristics and differences between these concepts and their concrete applications is of great importance. Originality/value: This study tries to provide a critical discussion of how the three concepts intersect and differentiate, leading to concrete results or results that have nothing to do with their meaning. There are no conceptual papers in the literature that deal with the three concepts and also analyse the implications on the real world.