Search Results (27)

The sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) literature does not directly address Scope 3 emissions despite their role as primary drivers of greenhouse gas emissions. This study aims to provide an overview of the main themes through which the SSCM literature has considered Scope 3 emissions and identify further avenues for research. A systematic literature review (SLR) was conducted. Scopus and Web of Science were the databases considered. Sixty-one papers were included in the analysis. Most papers focus on assessing and estimating Scope 3 emissions, followed by papers that discuss the reporting of Scope 3 emissions. These papers shed light on how firms may not report Scope 3 emissions if the information is negative to improve investors’ perception of the firm. The last group of papers discusses practices and strategies to manage Scope 3 emissions. The main challenge identified in establishing strategies to manage Scope 3 emissions is engagement with stakeholders, as, generally, only one or two tiers of the value chain cooperate. This study is the first to organize the literature on Scope 3 emissions under the lens of SSCM. If supply chains are to become more sustainable, focal enterprise coordination must be effective and leverage practices such as Scope 3 emissions metrics and measurement, data sharing, and green product development for all stakeholders. Full article

Industrial Internet Platforms (IIPs) provide critical value for supply chain management. The motivation for value creation and capture by supplier firms increasingly depends on acquiring and processing customer-oriented information, with geographical distance to customers being a key factor in assessing costs and benefits. This study investigates whether firms’ IIP adoption increases or decreases the geographical distance to their customers, utilizing supply chain data and digital transformation metrics from China’s A-share listed firms in the new energy vehicle industry. The study finds that an increased adoption level of IIPs by focal firms leads to a greater average geographical distance to their customers. This conclusion remains valid after addressing endogeneity concerns and performing several robustness checks. Moreover, the effect of IIP adoption on expanding the geographic scope of sales is significant when the focal firm is more specialized in the supply chain, more socially embedded, located in China’s eastern region, or acts as an upstream/downstream complement to complete vehicle manufacturers. No significant difference in the impact of IIP adoption is observed between private and state-owned enterprises. This study combines platform innovation and transaction cost theories, offering new insights and policy implications regarding the spatial impact of digital technology adoption in advanced manufacturing and related service industries. Full article

As the competition of standards among enterprises turns to the competition among innovation ecosystems, how to construct the technology standardization innovation ecosystem (TSIE) is of great significance to enhance the competitiveness of enterprises and even industries. Based on the perspective of actor network theory (ANT) through the case study of Haier, this paper constructs an ANT model for the formation of a TSIE and tries to answer the following questions: how is the TSIE formed? how do the actors gather and what roles do they play in the formation process? and what role do technology standards play in the formation process? This research finds that the formation of the TSIE results from interactions among the actors of ANT over different periods. The focal actors play a crucial role; their roles change from the construction of their own actor network to the empowerment of the sub-actor network construction. Other actors evolve from being defined to defining roles themselves. Standards are also crucial throughout this process: initially, they recruit and coordinate the primary actors to form close relationships, and later they facilitate bidirectional regulation, enable standardization, and coordinate the formation and development of sub-ecosystems. This paper explores the evolution of TSIE through the lens of ANT, advancing its application within this context. It enriches the theoretical research on this subject and offers a theoretical foundation for large enterprise platforms to facilitate the transformation of TSIE. Full article

Driven by the dual imperatives of global economic green transformation and the advancement of digital technologies, achieving synergistic enhancement through digitalization and greenization to promote sustainable development has become a focal point for both academia and practical fields. This study, utilizing a sample of Chinese A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2023, aims to explore the transformative potential of digital–green synergy (DGS) for enhancing enterprise sustainable development within the realm of production efficiency improvement. Employing a coupling coordination model based on the entropy-weighted TOPSIS method, the research measures the DGS levels of enterprises. Grounded in strategic synergy theory, the resource-based view, and dynamic capability theory, this study thoroughly investigates the direct impacts of DGS on corporate TFP, intermediary mechanisms, moderating effects, and heterogeneous roles. The research findings robustly demonstrate that DGS can significantly improve enterprise TFP through optimizing resource allocation, reducing cost stickiness, and enhancing operational efficiency, thereby facilitating the dynamic reorganization of production factors and the creation of sustainable value. Furthermore, external factors, such as financing constraints and environmental regulation, alongside internal organizational factors like executive characteristics, are shown to exert significant moderating effects on the effectiveness of DGS. In summary, this research not only highlights the crucial role of DGS in enhancing production efficiency as a driver for high-quality corporate development and the pursuit of sustainable goals but also provides important theoretical guidance for policymakers to incentivize digital and green transformation. It also offers practical insights for enterprise managers to strategically formulate synergistic development strategies, enhance economic benefits, and achieve long-term sustainable performance. Beyond these practical implications, this study further enriches the theoretical landscape by first extending strategic synergy theory to firm-level digital–green synergy in emerging markets; second by enhancing sustainability research by adopting a broader “environment-society” framework; methodologically innovating by developing a novel “goal-strategy-input-technology” synergy measurement framework; and finally, deepening the theoretical understanding of DGS-TFP relationships through mechanism and moderator exploration. Full article

Ecological protection and sustainable economic development are focal points of global attention. The continuous promotion of green technology during digital transformation has made green innovation essential for reducing environmental pollution and achieving sustainability. China is actively exploring new development models to mitigate environmental damage through digital transformation. This paper examines the impact mechanism of digital transformation on green innovation. It introduces ambidextrous learning as a mediating variable and innovation appropriability as a moderating variable. Additionally, it establishes a moderated mediation model grounded in organizational learning theory and innovation appropriability theory. The survey data from 155 traditional Chinese manufacturing enterprises are analyzed using hierarchical regression, bootstrap sampling, and structural equation modeling. The results indicate that digital transformation significantly boosts corporate green innovation. Both exploitative and exploratory learning act as positive partial mediators in this relationship. Furthermore, innovation appropriability further reinforces this relationship. The findings of this paper provide empirical evidence that supports the promotion of green innovation in enterprises. This evidence is essential for helping enterprises achieve sustainability and facilitate their green transformation. Full article

As the attention on sustainable corporate behavior intensifies, green technological innovation, as a key tool for achieving environmentally and socially sustainable development goals, has gradually become a focal point in many nations. This study investigates the impact of green technology innovation on corporate ESG performance using panel data from Chinese listed companies (2013–2022). The findings reveal that green technology innovation significantly enhances ESG outcomes, mediated by digital transformation and negatively moderated by financial constraints. The effect is particularly significant in state-owned enterprises and firms in eastern China. This research offers valuable theoretical foundations, actionable advice, and policy suggestions to assist enterprises in boosting their green transformation capabilities, refining their ESG practices, and enhancing their overall performance. Full article

With the rapid economic growth in China, the years from 2012 to 2017 witnessed a severe outbreak of haze pollution. In response, numerous enterprises were shut down or forced to reduce production, leading to significant negative impacts on the economy and society. Consequently, the scientific management of haze pollution has become a focal point of China’s environmental research. This paper explores the influence of green finance and environmental regulations on haze pollution, employing spatial autoregressive and spatial Durbin models to conduct an empirical analysis based on panel data from 30 Chinese provinces spanning 2000 to 2017. The following conclusions were thus drawn: from 2010 to 2017, the green finance index of the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region and Liaoning Province, which suffered severe haze pollution, showed an overall downward trend; efforts to strengthen environmental regulations played an important role in reducing air pollution, especially the PM2.5 level; the improvement in the green finance level can help reduce haze pollution; and green finance has an obvious spatial spillover effect. A number of policy recommendations were proposed on this basis, including strengthening inter-regional cooperation and exchanges in green finance, promoting the scientific application of environmental regulations in areas with serious haze pollution, strengthening the implementation of green finance strategies in areas with serious haze pollution, and establishing regional green finance demonstration zones. The purpose of this study is to provide meaningful support for China’s scientific management of haze pollution through an analysis of the impact of green finance and policy optimization. The innovative aspects of this research lie in its pioneering use of spatial econometric models to investigate the role of green finance and environmental regulations in controlling haze pollution. The findings reveal that advancements in green finance can significantly alleviate haze pollution. Full article

This research explores how participants in an innovation ecosystem, operating without a focal firm, can collaboratively envision and create societal value beyond their individual business goals. Using participatory action research, the investigation focuses on two cases within the offshore wind energy sector, involving four complementary enterprises and nine enterprises that are both complementary and competitive. The findings suggest that ecosystem participants can collectively pursue opportunities for sustainable value creation that surpass the interests and goals of individual firms. This shift towards a future-oriented, ecosystem-wide perspective was driven by the focus on ecosystem-level value propositions and the dynamic organizing of heterogeneous knowledge, individual behaviors, and organizational behaviors, enabling successful future-oriented sensemaking. The research process highlights practices that led to significant innovation outcomes, such as halving investments, reducing accidents and rework, accelerating operational flow, and fostering long-term investments, like a floating port for installation and maintenance improvements. This study enhances understanding of how future-oriented sensemaking in innovation ecosystems without a focal firm can drive innovation and societal value creation, offering insights for practitioners, academics, and policymakers on governance and collaborative efforts to enable value creation in innovation ecosystems. Full article

Wireless Local-Area Networks (WLANs), as a popular internet access solution, are widely used in numerous places, including enterprises, campuses, and public venues. As the number of devices increases, large-scale deployments will cause the problem of dense wireless networks, including a lot of energy consumption. Thus, the optimization of energy-efficient wireless AP devices has become a focal point of attention. To reduce energy consumption, we have proposed the active access-point (AP) configuration algorithm for WLANs using APs with a dual interface. This uses the greedy algorithm combined with the local search optimization method to find the minimum number of activated APs while satisfying the minimum throughput constraint. However, the previous algorithm basically satisfies only the average throughput among the multiple hosts associated with one AP, wherein some hosts may not reach the required one. In this paper, to overcome this limitation, we propose an enhanced active AP configuration algorithm by incorporating the throughput request satisfaction method that controls the actual throughput at the target value (target throughput) for every host by applying traffic shaping. The target throughput is calculated from the single and concurrent communicating throughput of each host based on channel occupancy time. The minimum throughput constraint will be iteratively adjusted to obtain the required target throughput and achieve the fair throughput allocation. For evaluations, we conducted simulations using the WIMNET simulator and experiments using the testbed system with a Raspberry Pi 4B for APs in four topology cases with five APs and ten hosts. The results show that the proposed method always achieved the required minimum throughput in simulations as well as in experiments, while minimizing the number of active APs. Thus, the validity and effectiveness of our proposal were confirmed. Full article

Sustainable development is a global focal point. This study aims to analyze the relationship between energy intensity and green innovation using panel data from 285 Chinese cities spanning from 2003 to 2019. The novel element of this research is the first-time exploration of green innovation through the lens of local industry attributes. It explains the impact of energy intensity on the development of green innovation. By employing a two-way fixed-effect model, the regression analysis reveals that higher energy intensity in cities negatively influences green innovation. Robustness and mechanism tests indicate that in regions with higher energy intensity, governments issue more policies to encourage enterprises and research institutions to pursue green innovation. However, these regions have developed significant path dependence, and local enterprises are reluctant to increase green investment even when facing stringent regulations. Heterogeneity analysis proves that cities with higher levels of digitalization, R&D investment, urbanization, and per capita GDP exhibit an increase in green innovation. The research and findings of this study are of significant importance for policy and strategy formulation, allowing governments and enterprises to develop targeted economic strategies to improve energy efficiency and promote green innovation, thereby achieving sustainable development goals. Potential limitations include data quality, and some key information is difficult to obtain from public sources due to confidentiality, which may result in limitations and biases in the results. Full article

The need for organizations to increase resilience is still growing, not least because of economic crises, such as the 2007–2009 global financial crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, and supply shortages in raw material procurement combined with rising commodity costs and energy prices. We use an attention-based view approach as a theoretical lens to investigate the shift in management’s attention due to a crisis, with a particular focus on working capital management (WCM) as a decisive finance tool. In addition, we examine how management’s attention shifts to organizational resilience (OR). We also analyze how managers’ cognitive flexibility (CF), which reflects their ability to anticipate and quickly adapt, moderates the change in attention. By surveying 307 top and middle managers in German small- and medium-sized enterprises, we measure the crisis effect on the shift in managerial attention to WCM and OR. In addition, we measure managers’ CF and examine the contribution of these individual characteristics in the context of WCM and OR. Our mediation model reveals a positive, indirect-only effect of the crisis on the shift in management attention to OR mediated by the shift in management attention to WCM. In addition, our results show that managers’ CF negatively moderates the effect between managerial focus shifts to WCM and to OR. Our study’s results deepen the understanding of the importance of managers’ CF in times of crisis and the impact of CF on sales development, suggesting that managers’ CF may influence the link between the focal characteristics of WCM and OR. Full article

Enterprises are the most important core organizations of the country and modern society, and their growth has always been a focal point in the theoretical field. This paper aims to focus on the sustainable development of platform enterprises by exploring the mechanism of platform growth. Thus, this paper reviews the literature and analyzes the challenges faced by platform enterprises during the four stages of birth, expansion, leadership, and self-renewal, as well as the strategies they have adopted. The main aims of this paper are to help understand the growth process of platform enterprises and identify three key points that need to be addressed for sustainable growth, including the disadvantages of resource externalities, the importance of the restructuration of business models, and the urgency of fulfilling social responsibility. To address the exogenous nature of resources, platform enterprises should pay attention to the initiative of complementors, the distribution of benefits, and ecological orchestration. The impact of technology, especially artificial intelligence, on business models and the application of technology to restructure business models should be given attention. It is also necessary to pay attention to how platform enterprises undertake their social responsibilities. A synthesis framework with seven propositions for future research has been proposed. Full article

This paper examines the outward foreign direct investment events of Chinese manufacturing firms from 2008 to 2022. It explores how sunk cost and performance feedback drive firms’ foreign exit strategies based on the behavioral theory of the firm. Additionally, it also examines the contextual factor that may affect the focal relationship. We adopt a panel logistic estimation to test the hypotheses. The conclusions show that firms are more likely to exit overseas markets when faced with sunk costs and negative performance feedback. Conversely, positive performance feedback significantly decreases the probability of firms exiting foreign markets. Additionally, environmental munificence and complexity can weaken the strength of the focal nexus to some extent. These findings hold both theoretical and practical significance for multinational enterprises and the government in the context of the ‘dual-circulation strategy’. Full article

Power batteries, the core component of the rapidly evolving electric vehicle industry, have increasingly become a focal point of attention. Recycling power batteries can mitigate environmental pollution and utilize resources efficiently, which is crucial for fostering a low-carbon economy and achieving sustainable development. Utilizing prospect theory, this study proposes a tripartite game model for low-carbon innovation in power battery recycling, involving government agencies, power battery manufacturers, and recycling enterprises. This paper initially identifies the evolutionary stability strategy, subsequently simulates the evolutionary process through parameter assignment, and explores parameter sensitivity along with comparative effects. This study indicates the following: (i) Government incentives are pivotal in motivating manufacturers and recyclers towards low-carbon innovation. (ii) Reducing technology costs and enhancing spillovers significantly boost low-carbon innovation’s appeal. (iii) Moderate carbon taxes can encourage businesses to engage in low-carbon innovation, while excessively high taxes may increase operating costs and hinder investment in innovation. Lastly, policy recommendations are made in order to support environmental preservation and the industry’s sustainable growth in the power battery recycling sector. Full article

Market convergence challenges socially sustainable supply chain management (SSSCM) due to the increasing competition. Identifying market convergence trends allows companies to respond quickly to market changes and improve supply chain resilience (SCR). Conventional approaches are one-sided and biased and cannot predict market convergence trends comprehensively and accurately. To address this issue, we propose a framework based on info2vec that solves the problem of matching multidimensional data by using the technology layer as the focal layer and the supply chain as the supporting layer. The framework enriches the supply chain dimension with the technology dimension. A knowledge graph is constructed to facilitate cross-domain information connectivity by integrating different data sources. The nodes in the knowledge graph were characterized using a representation learning algorithm, which enhanced feature mining during supply chain and market convergence. Changes in market demand were predicted based on link prediction experiments. Market convergence has an impact on firm cooperation and, thus, on SCR. The framework recommends potential technological and innovative cooperation opportunities for firms. In this way, it has been demonstrated to improve SSSCM through network resilience experiments. This method predicts market convergence efficiently based on the supply chain knowledge graph, which provides decision support for enterprise development. Full article