Work Together With One Heart: Enterprise Digitization and Green Innovation of Supply Chains Collaboration
TL;DR
The results reveal that supply chain collaboration is the optimal strategic decision for enterprises to balance innovation costs and competitive advantages, and digitalization has a spillover effect on upstream and downstream enterprises, reshaping the strategic landscape of the supply chain.
Abstract
Against intensifying market competition, supply chain green collaborative innovation (SCGCI) has evolved into a vital strategic option through which firms reduce operating costs, enhance firm value, and alleviate financing constraints, while digital transformation has become a strategic capability through which supply chain participants optimize long‐term profitability and sustain competitive advantage. Therefore, exploring how corporate digitalization shapes SCGCI carries prominent theoretical and practical value for corporate strategic decision‐making and industrial competition governance. This study introduces digitalization into a dynamic game model to investigate how digitalization reshapes firms' profit‐maximizing decisions and strategic interactions with supply chain partners under competitive market settings. It theoretically examines the mechanisms through which digitalization influences SCGCI and empirically tests them using data from listed companies between 2007 and 2023. The results reveal that supply chain collaboration is the optimal strategic decision for enterprises to balance innovation costs and competitive advantages. The digitalization of enterprises effectively stimulates SCGCI, with variations depending on market environments and firm‐specific characteristics. The facilitating effect of enterprises' digitalization on SCGCI is primarily mediated through the enhancement of interfirm trust and the reduction of barriers to collaboration. Additionally, government subsidies, digital regulation, and enterprise environmental information disclosure play a significant positive moderating role in this relationship. Further analysis indicates that digitalization has a spillover effect on upstream and downstream enterprises, reshaping the strategic landscape of the supply chain. SCGCI successfully translates into tangible financial benefits; it can significantly augment corporate value and lower financing constraints, thereby strengthening long‐term market competitiveness. This study provides managerial economics insights into how firms strategically employ digital transformation to coordinate innovation investments, enhance competitive performance, and improve economic returns through supply chain collaboration.