客户企业数字化、供应商企业ESG表现与供应链可持续发展

Customer Digitalization, Supplier ESG Performance and Supply Chain Sustainability

数字技术的快速兴起和广泛渗透深入推动供应链数字化转型,为构建可持续供应链提供了机遇。本文利用2013—2021年A股上市公司及其供应商数据,从数字化赋能的角度探讨客户企业数字化对供应商企业ESG表现的影响。研究发现,客户企业数字化对供应商企业的ESG表现具有增进效应,即数字化对供应链可持续发展具有赋能效应,且这一效应具有非对称性,在客户企业数字化程度高于供应商企业数字化程度的条件下更显著。机制检验显示,客户企业数字化增进供应商企业ESG表现主要通过结构赋能效应(即提升供应链协同水平)和资源赋能效应(即缓解供应商要素约束)来实现。异质性分析发现,当客户企业所在城市的政府环境关注度高于供应商企业所在城市的政府环境关注度,以及客户企业与供应商企业之间的关系更紧密时,客户企业数字化对供应商企业ESG表现的促进作用更显著。效果检验表明,客户企业数字化促进供应商企业ESG表现有助于增强供应链韧性。本文丰富了可持续供应链的影响因素与实现机制研究,拓宽了企业数字化和供应链韧性研究边界,对推动我国供应链可持续发展、提升供应链韧性与安全水平具有重要启示。

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 ensuring 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 environments 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, disparate capabilities, and high management costs. The revolutionary advancements and extensive integration of digital technology provide opportunities to overcome these obstacles. The development of a digital sustainable supply chain represents 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 customer firms positively influences the ESG performance of supplier firms, which means the empowering effect of digitalization on the sustainable development of the supply chain. Notably, this effect is asymmetrical, and it becomes more pronounced when the digitization of customer firms surpasses that of their suppliers. To ensure the robustness of the conclusions, 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 customer 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 government 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 suppliers' 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 digitalization 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.