Search Results (1,248)

Using 1135 customer–supplier–year observations involving Chinese A-share listed firms and their major suppliers from 2011 to 2023, together with prefecture-level government work reports and patent-assignment records, we examine whether environmental policy pressure faced by downstream customers shapes upstream suppliers’ external green technology acquisition. External green technology acquisition is measured as the log-transformed annual number of green patents assigned to each supplier. We find that suppliers acquire more external green patents when their customers face stronger local environmental policy pressure, with a one-standard-deviation increase in policy intensity associated with approximately 5.7% higher external green patent acquisition. The result is robust to placebo tests, alternative measures, and PPML estimation, while instrumental-variable estimates point in the same direction. Further analyses document stronger customer green-transition urgency and supplier-perceived supply-chain uncertainty under greater downstream policy intensity, and they show that the relationship is stronger among suppliers with weaker bargaining power or lower R&D intensity. Environment-related policy intensity is more strongly associated with end-of-pipe technology acquisition, whereas energy-transition and market-incentive policy intensity are more strongly associated with source-control technology acquisition. Overall, the findings indicate that environmental policy intensity in downstream customers’ cities is associated with upstream suppliers’ external green technology acquisition within observed customer–supplier relationships. Full article

Stable and efficient supply chain relationships are essential for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to strengthen competitive advantage and achieve sustainable growth. However, how resource-constrained SMEs overcome internal resource constraints and enhance competitiveness through supply chain integration remains underexplored. Taking China’s Supply Chain Innovation and Application Pilot Program (SCIAPP) as a quasi-natural experiment, this study uses panel data of SMEs from 2014 to 2024 and employs a SCIAPP significantly improves SMEs’ competitive advantage (${\beta }_1$ = 0.016, p < 0.01). Mechanism analyses reveal that SCIAPP enhances competitive advantage by mitigating the bullwhip effect and increasing innovation investment. The positive effect is stronger for firms with higher supply chain dependence, for non-capital-intensive firms, and for smaller firms. Further analysis shows that improvements in competitive advantage contribute to higher firm value. This study extends research on SMEs’ competitive advantage by demonstrating how government-led supply chain governance facilitates capability development among resource-constrained firms. The findings also provide implications for policymakers seeking to improve supply chain governance and promote the high-quality development of SMEs. Full article

This study examines whether national digital technological readiness moderates the relationship between national sustainability performance and supply chain logistics performance. Using a panel of 157 countries across six biennial waves from 2010 to 2023 (N = 850), with every predictor measured two years before the wave it explains, drawn from the World Bank Logistics Performance Index (LPI), the World Bank Sovereign ESG indicators, and the UNCTAD Frontier Technology Readiness Index (FTRI), we estimate a hybrid within-between panel model that separates durable cross-country differences from within-country change, with sustainability performance measured through three separately constructed environmental, social, and governance dimensions. Sustainability performance relates positively to logistics performance between countries, and the association strengthens with readiness. The association becomes statistically significant only above a readiness threshold on the FTRI scale, below which every low-income country in the sample falls. The moderating effect is driven by the social and governance dimensions rather than the environmental dimension. It operates on the sub-dimensions that domestic institutions govern, most notably customs and infrastructure, while disappearing for international shipping. The between-country interaction remains stable across alternative moderator definitions, alternative measure constructions, an expanded control set, and a permutation placebo test. This moderation follows the continuous level of readiness rather than income group boundaries. Grounded in Dynamic Capabilities Theory, the findings suggest that digital readiness functions as the capability through which sustainability investments translate into realized logistics performance, and they locate a readiness threshold with direct implications for the sequencing of development policy. Full article

This paper analyzes the viability of Indian equity markets in response to global energy supply shocks. This study attempts to correct the missing-variable bias in earlier literature by using the USD-to-INR exchange rate as an exogenous explanatory variable. This will help determine the intricate synthetic relationship between Brent Crude Oil Returns and the carbon-efficient S&P BSE GREENEX. Vector Autoregressive with exogenous variables (VARX) models are employed to analyze the effects of structural shocks to Brent Crude Oil prices on the S&P BSE GREENEX. The empirical results found that global oil price shocks might immediately affect green equity values in India. Even without foreign currency changes, the Indian Green Exchange Index (GREENEX) maintains its long-term values, showing structural resilience. Institutional investors and Indian financial authorities, such as SEBI and the Reserve Bank of India, gain better risk-management insights amid international energy crises from this information. It also shows that carbon-efficient standards can hedge inflation induced by foreign import supply chain interruptions. Full article

Digital technologies are increasingly adopted in corporate liquidity management, yet whether financial digitalization enables firms to achieve more effective working capital adjustment remains insufficiently understood. Financial shared services (FSS) may strengthen information integration, process standardization, and operational coordination, but existing research provides limited evidence on how external supply chain conditions shape the relationship between FSS and working capital adjustment effectiveness. Prior studies have focused primarily on adjustment speed rather than adjustment effectiveness, namely the extent to which firms maintain working capital close to target levels. Using panel data from Chinese A-share listed firms from 2014 to 2023, this study examines whether FSS is associated with the effect of working capital adjustment (DEV) and whether supply chain concentration moderates this relationship. Drawing on dynamic trade-off theory and information asymmetry theory, this study employs high-dimensional fixed-effects models to examine how internal information capabilities and external supply chain conditions jointly shape working capital adjustment. The findings show that firms adopting FSS tend to exhibit smaller deviations from target working capital levels, which is consistent with more effective adjustment. However, this association becomes weaker as supply chain concentration increases, suggesting that external dependence may constrain firms’ ability to translate enhanced internal information capabilities into improved working capital outcomes. Further analysis suggests that customer concentration plays a more prominent moderating role. This study extends the understanding of digital-enabled financial management beyond internal process improvement and identifies supply chain structure as an important boundary condition relevant to the value of FSS. Full article

Certification schemes are increasingly positioned as institutional mechanisms that may support sustainable food markets, yet the joint longitudinal relationship between certified production penetration, certified supply-chain infrastructure and organic market uptake remains insufficiently integrated in European-scale empirical analyses. This study examined how certified organic production, supply-chain infrastructure, and market uptake co-evolved across Europe. A country–year panel of 995 observations from 41 European countries (2000–2024) was assembled from FiBL statistics and analysed using descriptive trend analysis, Spearman correlations, linear mixed-effects models with country random intercepts, and k-means clustering. Certified organic systems expanded substantially: mean organic farmland share rose from 2.80% to 9.73%, retail sales share from 1.42% to 4.49%, and per capita consumption from €25.82 to €87.60. Organic area share remained positively associated with organic retail sales share after adjustment for PPP-adjusted GDP per capita (β = 1.247, p < 0.001), with a similar pattern for the secondary per capita consumption outcome (β = 36.426, p < 0.001). Certified supply-chain actors were strongly intercorrelated (producers–processors ρ = 0.824). Organic farmland share was the most consistent correlate of market uptake, including after adjustment for GDP per capita, whereas absolute operator counts and supply-chain infrastructure indicators were more difficult to interpret independently because of collinearity. A four-cluster typology showed that countries with the largest certified production bases were not those with the most mature markets. These findings are consistent with the interpretation that certification penetration may support market development by providing credible institutional signals, but trust creation, information asymmetry reduction, and legitimacy were not directly measured. The results, therefore, indicate an association between certification-system development and market uptake, while also showing that production expansion and market maturity are distinct dimensions of the sustainability transition. Full article

Background: Manufacturing productivity increasingly depends on reliable interorganizational flows, yet supply chain disruptions can interrupt materials, information, finance, and efficient use of productive inputs. Although supply chain resilience is widely treated as a continuity capability, its relationship with firm-level total factor productivity remains insufficiently established. Methods: This study uses 22,509 firm-year observations for Chinese A-share listed manufacturing firms from 2009 to 2024. An entropy-weighted resilience index is constructed from adaptability, resistance, recovery capacity, human capital, institutional support. Firm-level revenue productivity is estimated using the Olley Pakes method, and the analysis employs fixed effects regressions, robustness tests, a two-step selection correction test, mechanism regressions, heterogeneity analysis, and dimension-specific tests. Results: Supply chain resilience is positively associated with firm-level total factor productivity, and this association remains robust to alternative productivity and resilience measures, sample restrictions, industry-by-year fixed effects, and selection correction. Resilience is also associated with lower financing constraints and investment inefficiency. The association is stronger for firms with higher managerial incentives, high-technology industries, and competitive markets, while recovery capacity is negatively associated with contemporaneous productivity. Conclusions: Supply chain resilience supports efficient resource utilization, but its productivity value depends on capability composition, timing, and efficient resilience investment rather than maximizing resilience resources. Full article

Climate risk increasingly threatens agricultural supply chain stability. Green finance (GF) and environmental regulation (ER) are two key policy instruments intended to counter this risk, yet their effectiveness in fostering supply chain resilience (SCR) remains ambiguous. Using panel data from Chinese A-share-listed agricultural firms (2010–2024), this study examines the average and conditional associations of GF, ER, and climate risk awareness (CRA) with SCR via a two-way fixed-effects model, supplemented by instrumental variables, quantile regressions, heterogeneity tests, and interaction models. Text-based CRA is positively associated with SCR. Contemporaneous physical climate risk derived from meteorological observations shows no robust association, whereas its one-period-lagged, economic-scale-adjusted counterpart is significantly negative. Neither GF nor ER exhibits an unconditional linear relationship with SCR, and CRA substantially attenuates the marginal effect of GF. Financing constraints, supply chain concentration, factor allocation efficiency, and innovation intensity do not form stable indirect channels. Taken together, the findings suggest that the relationship between GF, ER, and agricultural SCR does not operate through a single transmission pathway, but may instead be shaped by whether firm-level risk sensing, resource mobilization, operational coordination, and structural reconfiguration form an effective capability configuration. Full article

Background: The downstream oil and gas processing industry faces substantial environmental, regulatory, safety, and operational risks. Advanced technologies can reduce these risks and improve productivity, compliance, sustainability, and worker safety. However, despite adopting AI, analytics, machine learning, and IoT, Indian firms continue to lag behind their global counterparts, and Industry 5.0 adoption in this sector remains underexplored. Methods: This study examines Industry 5.0 adoption barriers using data from an Indian public-sector oil and gas organisation. Guided by the Resource-Based View and supply chain integration perspective, it applies a mixed-methods design combining a literature review, focus group discussion, Delphi analysis, and Fuzzy ISM–MICMAC. Forty-two barriers were identified and reduced to eight critical barriers. Results: Low technological maturity and lack of value-chain integration emerged as the principal driving barriers, influencing implementation failure, organisational technological readiness, and management commitment, which subsequently affect data quality. Geopolitics emerged as an autonomous barrier with both positive and adverse effects. Conclusions: This study develops a sector-specific framework explaining the hierarchical relationships among technological, organisational, sociotechnical, and value-chain barriers. It extends Industry 5.0 research in hazardous, human–technology-dependent operations and offers practical guidance for a human-centric, sustainable, and resilient transformation. Full article

China’s pork sector is a major component of the national food system. Establishing plant-based pork supply chains requires coordination across production, quality control, infrastructure, logistics, information exchange, and market formation. However, previous studies generally examine these barriers separately, limiting understanding of how they interact within the wider food-supply system. This study identifies and analyzes the systemic barriers to establishing plant-based pork supply chains in China. An integrated Fuzzy Delphi Method (FDM) and Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) approach is applied. FDM is used to refine and validate 14 contextually relevant barriers based on expert consensus, while DEMATEL examines their direct and indirect relationships, systemic prominence, and net causal influence. Insufficient research and development funding and deficiencies in quality control emerge as the strongest net causal barriers. High infrastructure investment also belongs to the cause group, while technological, operational, and market-related barriers occupy different causal and dependent positions within the wider system. The results support a sequenced intervention strategy that begins with innovation capacity, quality assurance, and infrastructure, followed by operational coordination and market formation. This study contributes by moving beyond barrier identification and ranking to explain how multiple barrier domains interact and how interventions can be prioritized. The analysis concerns supply chain establishment and does not directly assess the environmental, economic, or social sustainability performance of plant-based pork. Full article

Although digital transformation is increasingly regarded as a vital pathway toward corporate decarbonization, its environmental impacts can spread beyond the boundaries of the undergoing firms. This study explores whether digital transformation implemented by focal firms affects the carbon emission intensity of their upstream suppliers and downstream customers. Using data from Chinese A-share-listed companies over the period of 2009–2023, we find that focal firms’ digital transformation significantly reduces the carbon emission intensity of upstream and downstream partners. Supply chain concentration and partner digitalization partially mediate this relation, indicating that changes in supply chain structure and the diffusion of digital capabilities constitute important channels through which carbon reduction effects are transmitted. The effect is stronger for partners with higher total factor productivity, demonstrating that the efficacy of digital spillovers depends partly on firms’ productive efficiency and absorptive capacity. Further analysis shows that such effects are more prominent with heavily polluting industries, among smaller firms, and in industries with weaker competition. The results remain robust to alternative variable measurements, model specification, and treatments for potential endogeneity. These findings show that digital transformation generates environmental spillovers through vertical supply chain relationships and highlight the role of focal firms in facilitating supply chain carbon emission reduction. Full article

Hydroxypropyl cellulose (HPC) is extensively utilized as a binder and in controlled-release matrices, yet its production predominantly relies on high-purity α-cellulose derived from wood or cotton, which subjects supply chains to sustainability issues and fluctuations in feedstock prices. Annually, sugarcane bagasse, estimated at approximately 490–600 million tons annualy, presents a scalable, residue-based cellulose source for HPC production within circular bioeconomy frameworks. This review compiles findings from 106 peer-reviewed studies on cellulose and HPC derived from bagasse, addressing synthesis methods, structure–property relationships, and pharmaceutical applications. Published studies indicate that HPC derived from bagasse can achieve a degree of substitution (DS 1.87) compared to commonly reported commercial wood-pulp HPC grades (DS 1.8–2.5). Crystallinity reduction relative to commercial HPC has been proposed based on the lower crystallinity of the underlying bagasse cellulose feedstock, but this has not yet been directly measured for the hydroxypropylated product. Beyond performance, bagasse is an agricurtural residue available at negligible feedstock cost, in contrast to the established market prices of purified wood pulp and cotton linter (US$18–25 per kg) used in commercial HPC manufacturing. Life-cycle assessments of bagasse valorization pathways have similarly reported favorable environmental profiles relative to conventional biomass feedstocks. However, no dedicated techno-economic or life-cycle assessment specific to pharmaceutical-grade HPC production from bagasse has been published, and these potential sustainability and cost advantages therefore remain to be formally validated at industrial scale. Key challenges remain in regulatory acceptance, impurity control, batch-to-batch standardization, and scaling up etherification under pharmaceutical good manufacturing practice (GMP) constraints. Overall, the reviewed literature positions sugarcane bagasse (SCB)-derived HPC as a promising candidate for combining excipient performance with potential sustainability and cost benefits, necessitating targeted process optimization and qualification studies to expedite industrial adoption. Full article

The construction of adequate infrastructure in low-resource regions is frequently constrained by limited technical facilities, inadequate supply chains, and the absence of standardized quality control. This study presents a case study of the reinforced concrete foundation system of a multifunctional sports hall constructed in Cacine, Guinea-Bissau, where concrete production was carried out under severe logistical and technological constraints. Following construction, laboratory investigations were performed to evaluate the transported cement sample, locally available aggregates, and concrete specimens collected on site. Cement characterization included particle-size distribution, thermal analysis, and compressive strength testing, while the concrete was assessed through compressive strength and water absorption measurements. The aggregate grading complied with the relevant technical requirements and fell within the recommended grading envelope; however, the cement exhibited lower mechanical performance than expected from its declared class, although the non-standard specimen geometry does not permit formal conformity assessment. The concrete reached an average 28-day compressive strength of 12.9 MPa and exhibited relatively high water absorption, reflecting the combined influence of volumetric batching, high water demand, limited mixing efficiency, and the absence of chemical admixtures. Scenario analyses based on the Bolomey relationship indicated that improved control of the effective water-to-cement ratio could substantially enhance concrete performance. Although the study is limited by retrospective testing and a small number of specimens, it provides practical insight into the adaptation of concrete technology to resource-constrained environments and identifies key technological priorities for future infrastructure projects in Guinea-Bissau and similar regions. Full article

Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) risks increasingly propagate across interconnected supply chains, yet conventional ESG assessment methods remain largely reliant on firm-level disclosures and static ESG ratings that often overlook indirect risk transmission among trading partners. This study develops a network-aware artificial intelligence (AI) framework for forecasting ESG risk by integrating Graph Neural Networks (GNNs), transformer-based natural language processing (NLP), explainable AI, and conventional machine-learning techniques. The proposed framework combines supply-chain network structures, shipment-level trade information, ESG controversy records, governance indicators, and transformer-derived ESG sentiment extracted using FinBERT and RoBERTa. Using a dataset of 11,386 firms across 27 industries from 2015 to 2025, the proposed GNN achieved the highest predictive performance, outperforming conventional machine-learning models with an ROC-AUC of 0.913. The results further demonstrate that supply-chain network centrality and transformer-derived ESG sentiment substantially improve the early identification of firms exposed to future ESG controversies. By integrating network relationships with textual ESG intelligence, the proposed framework advances FinTech-enabled ESG analytics and provides a scalable approach for proactive risk monitoring, sustainable investment decision-making, and supply-chain risk management. Full article

The aim of this article is to determine the significance of short supply chains for local and regional development in Poland. The supply chain in Poland is defined as a coordinated set of people, financial and material resources, and activities involved in the process of delivering goods and services from the producer to the end consumer. Short Supply Chains (SSCs) are the foundation of the green economy, aiming to minimize the number of intermediaries and build direct relationships based on trust. Although short supply chains have been widely discussed in the context of sustainable agriculture and rural development, there is still limited research examining how digitalization and local organizational models jointly influence the development of SSCs and their contribution to local and regional development in Poland. This study addresses this gap by analysing selected Polish case studies and examining the combined role of digitalization, institutional support, and local initiatives in strengthening short supply chains. The article presents the situation of short supply chains in Poland using the example of selected organizations and initiatives, such as Poznań Green Market, Sady Grójeckie, Warmiński Koszyk, and Wiejska e-skrzynka. These cases demonstrate the impact of advancing digitalization on the development of local food markets, particularly in terms of shortening distribution channels, increasing access to local products, and strengthening producer–consumer relationships. The economic basis of SSCs is based on farmers taking over market margins and diversifying their income through agricultural retail trade (RHD), marginal, local, and limited (MOL) activities, and agritourism. This development is stimulated by EU funds, including the Rural Development Program (RDP) and Local Action Group (LAG) initiatives, as well as ongoing digitization and growing demand for local food. Furthermore, the development of local markets and short supply chains in the food sector is in line with the European “Farm to Fork” Strategy, which aims to ensure better food quality, reduce waste, and decrease the environmental impact of food systems. The analysis presented in the article will highlight the potential of short supply chains in political processes and make a significant contribution to the debate on strategies for supporting local and regional food markets. Full article