Digital disruption as a managerial reconfiguration: implications for sustainable marketing management

Purpose This paper aims to review how digital disruption is conceptualised across organisations, markets and society and interpret its implications through managerial and sustainability-oriented perspectives. It conceptualises disruption not as a technology itself, but as a process mediated by the reconfiguration of core managerial functions and examines how that process affects transparency, accountability and the credibility of sustainability-oriented market practices. Design/methodology/approach This study draws on a qualitative systematic literature review of 81 peer-reviewed articles published between 2000 and 2025 and retrieved from Scopus. An integrative interpretive framework is developed by analysing disruption through the lens of classical managerial functions (i.e. planning, organising, staffing, leading and controlling) and interpreting them from an internal and external marketing management perspective. Findings Digital disruption reconfigures managerial functions by making planning more anticipatory, organising more platform-mediated, staffing more hybrid, leadership more interpretive and ethically demanding and control more “datafied” and continuous. These interconnected changes offer opportunities for greater transparency, traceability, and responsiveness, while also creating risks of opacity, platform dependence, metric fixation, and accountability gaps. Sustainable marketing outcomes therefore depend on how organisations govern digitally enabled managerial reconfiguration rather than on technology adoption alone. Originality/value This paper distinguishes digital technologies from the disruptive organisational consequences that may follow their adoption and explains disruption as a managerially mediated process. It extends disruption research through an integrated managerial functions framework and clarifies how this process conditions credible sustainable marketing. Practically, the framework helps managers assess whether digital initiatives support transparent sustainability claims, accountable decision-making and stakeholder trust.