Jul 2026· Asian Review of Accounting· 0 citations· 57 references
Abstract
This study investigates the effect of digital transformation on firms’ environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance and examines how state ownership moderates this relationship. It aims to clarify whether digital capabilities enhance sustainability outcomes across different ownership structures in an emerging market context.
The analysis draws on a panel dataset of industrial manufacturing firms listed in Vietnam from 2018 to 2024. Digital transformation is measured using a text-based index derived from annual reports, constructed through keyword frequency analysis. ESG performance is proxied by ESG disclosure, quantified using the term frequency-inverse document frequency method. Panel regression models with interaction terms assess the moderating effect of state ownership, while subgroup analyses examine heterogeneity across ownership forms.
Digital transformation has a significant positive influence on ESG performance. However, this effect appears to be less pronounced for state-owned enterprises, suggesting that institutional and governance characteristics may attenuate firms’ ability to translate digital investments into sustainability outcomes.
The findings offer insights for policymakers and managers seeking to align digital strategies with sustainability objectives. Enhancing ESG reporting regulations, fostering digital–ESG integration and improving governance mechanisms in state-owned firms may amplify the sustainability benefits of digital transformation.
This study contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence on the digital transformation–ESG nexus in a transition economy where state influence remains prominent. Methodologically, it introduces a scalable text-mining approach to measuring firm-level digitalization and ESG engagement using corporate disclosures.
As a crucial means of advancing environmental sustainability, firms are increasingly emphasizing environmental disclosure. While prior research has focused on stakeholder pressure and corporate governance, less attention has been given to the role of technological advancements in the digital era. Drawing on technology affordance theory, this study examines how digital transformation influences corporate environmental disclosure and identifies contextual moderators of this relationship. Using a panel dataset of Chinese listed firms from 2010–2021, we employ two-way fixed-effects models to analyze the impact of digital transformation, moderated by pollution pressure and government environmental focus. Results reveal that digital transformation significantly enhances environmental disclosure, with stronger effects among firms under greater pollution pressure or in regions with high government environmental focus. The findings remain robust across multiple endogeneity and robustness analyses, including two-stage residual inclusion estimations, system generalized method of moments models, reverse causality tests, selection-ratio analysis, alternative measures, alternative econometric estimations, and random-sampling tests. This study contributes to environmental disclosure literature by identifying digital transformation as a key driver, extends engineering management research by linking digital transformation to sustainability governance, and advances technology affordance theory by highlighting the role of institutional contexts in affordance actualization. The findings also provide actionable insights for engineering managers and policymakers on how to align digital transformation initiatives with sustainability governance.
Shengjie Xie, Xiaowei Liu, W. Qu· IEEE transactions on enginee...· 0 citations
Corporate resilience has become a critical capability for firms to cope with increasing environmental uncertainties and external shocks. Against the backdrop of the rapid development of the digital economy, this study examines whether digital transformation enhances corporate resilience and further investigates whether environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance serves as a complementary transmission mechanism in this relationship. Drawing on resource orchestration theory, this study uses panel data of Chinese A-share listed companies from 2016 to 2024 and estimates a series of firm fixed-effects models. The results indicate that digital transformation significantly enhances corporate resilience, and the findings remain robust after a series of robustness checks and endogeneity tests are conducted. Further analysis reveals that ESG performance partially mediates the relationship between digital transformation and corporate resilience, suggesting that responsible business practices complement the resilience-enhancing effect of digital transformation. The results of the heterogeneity analysis further indicate that the positive effect of digital transformation is significantly stronger for high-tech firms. In addition, firms exhibit substantial variation in the consistency between digital transformation communication and actual digital investment. Further analysis suggests that greater alignment between digital transformation communication and substantive implementation is associated with stronger resilience outcomes, providing supplementary evidence on the implementation process of digital transformation. This study contributes to the literature on digital transformation and corporate resilience by revealing the resource orchestration process through which digital transformation creates organizational value and identifying ESG performance as a complementary transmission mechanism. The findings also have practical implications for firms seeking to strengthen their resilience and achieve sustainable development in an increasingly uncertain environment.
Yu Shen, Xiao Qin, Quan Fang· Sustainability· 0 citations
This study examines how digital transformation (DT) is associated with perceived Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) outcomes through Accounting Information Quality (AIQ) among Vietnamese listed non-financial firms. Rather than treating the DT-ESG relationship as a solely operational link, the study tests whether AIQ serves as an informational capability through which digital systems improve the measurement, monitoring and disclosure of sustainability-related activities. Survey data were collected from 215 senior managers and analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). The results show positive associations between DT, AIQ and perceived ESG outcomes, and AIQ partially mediates the DT-ESG relationship (variance accounted for, VAF = 44.8%). The strongest sub-path is from AIQ to governance, suggesting that reliable and timely information is especially relevant to oversight and accountability. The findings should be interpreted with caution because the study relies on cross-sectional, single-source perceptual data. The study contributes by specifying a modest but analytically distinct informational pathway linking digitalization, reporting quality and sustainability-oriented managerial outcomes in an emerging-market context.
T. Vu, Thang Van Pham· Discover Sustainability· 0 citations
In emerging economies, integrating innovation, governance, and ESG criteria poses a strategic challenge, necessitating analyses that align these dimensions. This study, using data from 3483 observations of companies listed on B3 (2015-2022), examined the effects of these factors on economic-financial performance, alongside ESG’s role in mitigating CEO duality and promoting female board representation. Employing the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM), results revealed complex relationships: innovation positively impacted performance, solidifying its role as a competitive driver. CEO duality exhibited progressively negative effects, highlighting risks of power concentration. Female representation yielded ambiguous impacts, suggesting reliance on inclusion policies. ESG practices, though linked to operational costs and greenwashing in isolation, enhanced positive outcomes when combined with diversified boards, underscoring governance-sustainability synergies. Theoretically, the study integrated Stakeholder and Agency Theories, indicating ESG amplifies benefits in collaborative contexts but fails to offset governance gaps. Practically, it recommends balanced governance structures, separation of leadership roles, and gender diversity investments as strategic complements to ESG. Thus, the research underscores the relevance of multifaceted approaches for sustainable performance in emerging markets, offering insights into mitigating risks while leveraging innovation and governance synergies.
Adevair de Deus Ribeiro· International journal of res...· 0 citations
This study investigates how sustainability in the digital era shapes corporate value through the interplay between environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance and technological transformation in African business environments. In emerging economies, where institutional weaknesses, regulatory inconsistencies, and rising stakeholder scrutiny create complex operational conditions, the strategic relevance of ESG practices remains underexplored. Drawing on Stakeholder Theory and the Resource‐Based View, this research conceptualizes ESG engagement as a strategic capability that contributes to long‐term value creation, while digital transformation is viewed as an enabling mechanism that strengthens firms' ability to convert sustainability efforts into financial outcomes. Using a panel of 882 firm‐year observations from publicly listed manufacturing firms across Africa between 2010 and 2023, the study employs the system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimator to address potential endogeneity, dynamic panel bias, and unobserved heterogeneity. Robustness checks, including alternative performance measures, winsorization, and endogeneity diagnostics, reinforce the reliability of the results. The findings show that environmental and social performance significantly enhance corporate value, whereas governance performance exhibits a more nuanced nonlinear relationship. Digital transformation positively moderates the ESG and corporate value link, indicating that technology enables firms to better leverage sustainability initiatives for financial gains. Heterogeneity analysis further reveals that ownership structures and industry classifications shape the strength of these relationships. The study highlights the strategic importance of aligning ESG practices with digital transformation efforts to drive sustainable corporate value in Africa's evolving business landscape, offering implications for managers, policymakers, and investors committed to advancing sustainability‐driven strategy.
Habeeb Tomori Abass, Zhuyun Xie, Ishmael Wiredu· Business Strategy & Deve...· 0 citations
This study examines whether environmental, social, and governance performance promotes firm green transformation in China's emerging economy context, and explains how ESG engagement moves beyond symbolic legitimacy toward organizational change. It conceptualizes green transformation as a dual process that combines green innovation with efficiency upgrading, thereby linking external sustainability pressures to firms’ internal innovation capabilities and productivity improvements. By focusing on Chinese A-share listed firms, the study aims to clarify the firm-level mechanisms through which ESG performance affects independently developed green technologies, collaborative green innovation, and total factor productivity, while identifying the organizational conditions that strengthen or weaken these effects.
The study uses an unbalanced panel of Chinese A-share listed firms from 2015 to 2024. Green transformation is measured through independently filed green patents, jointly filed green patents, and total factor productivity estimated using the Levinsohn–Petrin approach. Baseline fixed-effects models are employed to estimate the relationship between ESG performance and green transformation. To address selection bias and dynamic endogeneity, the analysis further applies propensity score matching combined with fixed effects and system GMM estimations. Robustness tests use alternative ESG ratings and alternative green transformation measures. Mechanism and heterogeneity analyses examine internal channels and conditional firm characteristics in greater empirical detail.
The results show that higher ESG performance significantly promotes all three dimensions of firm green transformation: independent green innovation, collaborative green innovation, and productivity upgrading. These findings remain robust across matching-based fixed-effects models, system GMM estimations, alternative ESG ratings, and alternative outcome measures. Mechanism tests reveal that ESG facilitates green transformation by expanding innovation human capital, improving internal control quality, and shaping firms’ financing conditions. Heterogeneity analyses indicate that the positive effect of ESG is stronger among tech-intensive firms and small firms, suggesting that absorptive capacity and marginal legitimacy gains condition the effectiveness of ESG engagement in China’s institutional context.
This study offers value by reframing ESG as an internal transformation capability rather than a disclosure or legitimacy device. It advances ESG research by unpacking three firm-level transmission mechanisms—innovation human capital, internal control quality, and financing conditions—through which ESG supports green innovation and productivity upgrading. It also broadens green transformation measurement by combining independent green patents, joint green patents, and Levinsohn–Petrin total factor productivity. Focusing on Chinese A-share firms, the study provides context-sensitive evidence from an emerging economy and shows that ESG effects vary by technological intensity and firm size, offering implications for differentiated sustainability governance and investment.
Jingjing Lyu, Yixiao Zhu· International Journal of Eme...· 0 citations
