Navigating the twin transition through human capital: Insights from the fashion industry

The twin transition toward sustainability and digitalization has attracted growing scholarly attention, yet limited empirical evidence explains how these dimensions are implemented and integrated within organizations. In particular, little is known about how sustainability, digital technologies, and human capital configurations interact and are integrated in practice. This study addresses this gap through a multiple case study of five companies in the fashion industry, based primarily on semi-structured interviews. The findings identify four recurring cross-case patterns. First, sustainability practices remain predominantly human-driven and largely predate digitalization, being embedded in design decisions, material sourcing, and relational supply chain coordination. Second, digital technologies are mainly adopted for compliance, monitoring, and reporting purposes, generating a persistent data-decision gap in which increasing data availability does not translate into improved managerial decision-making. Third, a systematic mismatch emerges between the current compliance-oriented role of digital systems and organizations' expectations of more integrative and strategic digital support. Fourth, the effectiveness of the twin transition depends less on the mere presence of digital or sustainability skills than on how competences are configured and integrated across functions. In this context, human capital performs a bridging and compensatory role, connecting fragmented systems and enabling cross-functional alignment. The study contributes theoretically by challenging techno-centric interpretations of digital transformation and conceptualizing the twin transition as an organizational capability-building process shaped by competence configuration rather than technology adoption alone. Accordingly, the proposed roadmap suggests that managers should prioritize integrative capability development and cross-functional coordination over further stand-alone investments in digital infrastructure.