TECHNOLOGY LEADERS IN CONDITIONS OF ECONOMIC INSTABILITY: ANALYSIS OF THE RUSSIAN COAL INDUSTRY

In the context of increasing external shocks, restriction, unprecedented development of the digital ecosystem, the technological factor becomes a key to business development and ensuring national competitiveness and security.The digital upgrade of the economic framework and its technological platform implies the development of tools for structural analysis of the changes observed in the technology leaders.The purpose of this article is to identify and study the dynamics of the companies-technology leaders in conditions of economic instability and digital transformation of the economy.The selection included 106 enterprises of the Russian coal industry.The analysis covered the period of 2019-2023.The DEA method was used to assess the technical efficiency of the companies and identify the technology leaders.The calculations were made with respect to the aggressive and conservative leadership strategies.The methodology and criteria have been developed for defining three types of companies, i.e. well-established technology leaders, new technology leaders, and companies that lost their leadership.An approach has been proposed to distinguish the large-scale and small-scale leaders.A decrease is observed in the number of leaders in both strategies, however, in the aggressive strategy it takes place faster and mostly concerns large-size companies.Leaders in both strategies have been found to have low sustainability.Only about 50-70% of the companies were able to maintain leadership throughout the studied time period.Small businesses cannot achieve sustainable leadership in the aggressive strategy.