Customer Digitalization,Supplier ESG Performance and Supply Chain Sustainability
The sustainable development of supply chains that balance economic,social,and environmental relationships is an inevitable requirement for promoting the modernization of supply chains,improving supply chain resilience,and en-suring supply chain security and stability.The construction of sustainable supply chains has become a new trend in the evolution of supply chain management.Unlike conventional supply chains,sustainable supply chains depend on environ-ments with greater visibility,necessitating enhanced requirements for information communication and sharing,as well as for interaction and collaboration among supply chain partners.With conventional technological methods,establishing a sustainable supply chain encounters several obstacles,including information asymmetry,supply-demand mismatch,dispa-rate capabilities,and high management costs.The revolutionary advancements and extensive integration of digital tech-nology provide opportunities to overcome these obstacles.The development of a digital sustainable supply chain repre-sents a novel approach to achieving sustainable development and ensuring the stability of supply chains,and it also marks an important emerging research area within the field of supply chain management.However,this issue remains nascent in academic research.Answering the question of whether and how digitalization empowers the sustainable development of supply chains is crucial for a thorough understanding and proactive establishment of digital sustainable supply chains.Based on the empowerment theory and using data from Chinese A-share listed companies and their suppliers from 2013 to 2021,this paper investigates the empowering effect of digitalization on the sustainable development of the supply chain from the perspective of interaction between customer firms and their suppliers.We find that the digitization of cus-tomer firms positively influences the ESG performance of supplier firms,which means the empowering effect of digitali-zation on the sustainable development of the supply chain.Notably,this effect is asymmetrical,and it becomes more pro-nounced when the digitization of customer firms surpasses that of their suppliers.To ensure the robustness of the conclu-sions,this paper employs a series of approaches to address endogeneity problems and conduct robustness tests.The mechanism test shows that the improvement in suppliers'ESG performance driven by the digitization of customer firms is primarily facilitated by structural and resource empowerment effects.On the one hand,structural empowerment im-proves supply chain coordination including risk management,operational and transparency collaboration between cus-tomer firms and their suppliers.Resource empowerment,on the other hand,alleviates suppliers'resource constraints by easing financing restrictions and encouraging green innovation.Further,heterogeneity analysis reveals that the positive impact of the digitization of customer firms on suppliers'ESG performance is more significant when the local govern-ment environmental attention in the home city of customer firms exceeds that of the suppliers'home city,and when the relationship between customers and suppliers is closer.Finally,the real-effect test shows that the improvement of suppli-ers'ESG performance driven by the digitization of customer firms contributes to stronger supply chain resilience.This paper makes several contributions as follows.Firstly,it delineates the specific conditions under which digitaliza-tion facilitates the sustainable development of supply chains,thereby broadening the scope of research into the direct im-pacts of digitalization on the performance of sustainable supply chains.Secondly,it elucidates the previously opaque mechanisms,often referred to as the"black box",through which digitalization promotes the sustainable development of supply chains,thus deepening the understanding of how digitalization influences sustainable supply chain performance.Thirdly,this paper highlights the beneficial outcomes of digitalization in fostering sustainable development of supply chains,contributing to expanding research on the ways that digitalization can bolster supply chain resilience.Lastly,our findings have practical regulatory implications and offer guidance on how to advance the sustainable development of China's supply chains and improve their resilience and security.
DigitalizationESGCorporate Social ResponsibilitySustainabilitySupply Chain Resilience
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