Building on emerging debates on the ‘dark’ and ‘bright’ side of digital globalization, and calls for considering its environmental and social implications in more detail, this perspective article seeks to ‘unravel’ these components of ‘the digital age’ for International Business (IB). Inspired by the affordance perspective developed in Information Systems research, we offer IB scholars a new approach to ‘zoom in’ on the (potential) role of individual novel technologies in addressing specific sustainable development issues. Three examples illustrate the relevance of this approach for multinationals and for developing innovative research avenues in IB, which extend existing insights on digital globalization.

基于关于数字全球化“黑暗”和“光明”方面的新兴辩论，并呼吁更详细地考虑其环境和社会影响，这篇观点文章旨在为国际商业“解开”“数字时代”的这些组成部分（IB）。受信息系统研究中开发的可供性观点的启发，我们为 IB 学者提供了一种新方法来“放大”个别新技术在解决特定可持续发展问题中的（潜在）作用。三个例子说明了这种方法对跨国公司和在 IB 中开发创新研究途径的相关性，这些途径扩展了对数字全球化的现有见解。