Can Digital Transformation Drive Green Transformation in Manufacturing Companies?—Based on Socio-Technical Systems Theory Perspective

Abstract

The current world’s green economy and digital economy collide at an accelerated pace, and the deep integration of digitalization and greening has become a new requirement for high-quality industrial transformation. Premised on a socio-technical system (STS)’s theoretical viewpoint from Chinese manufacturing firms, the study examines the effects of the digital transformation (DT) of companies on green transformation (GT), as well as the function of channels and processes. This study uses 70 samples of A-share-listed Chinese manufacturing companies from 2013 to 2020; a combination of linear regression and fsQCA is used to empirically test the research model and analyze the equivalence path. It is found that (1) DT significantly drives the GT of manufacturing firms; (2) DT influences the GT of manufacturing firms by alleviating the information asymmetry problem; and (3) executive team heterogeneity plays a positive mechanism role in the relationship between DT and GT. The qualitative comparative analysis yields two types of paths: (1) the main constructs that shape high GT levels are high DT intensity, low information asymmetry, and high TMT gender heterogeneity, which mainly arise in the eastern region and play a more pronounced role in state-owned enterprises, heavy pollution, and high-tech industries; (2) for non-state-owned enterprises in traditional industries in the central and western regions with average digital development, high TMT gender heterogeneity is the key to GT. The study expands the application of related theories and has practical implications for how Chinese manufacturing enterprises can effectively promote GT.

A Study on the Mechanism of Digital Technology’s Impact on the Green Transformation of Enterprises: Based on the Theory of Planned Behavior Approach

“…This study indicates that DT facilitates the process of GT in enterprises. This finding is in line with Zhang [9] and Waqas [124]. Digital transformation brings productivity and organizational performance improvements to companies, making it an inevitable choice for the future development of Chinese companies [14].…”

“…Digitalization on the production side brings new changes in production processes, decision making, and environmental monitoring to enterprises and becomes the basis for GT [78,79]. At the same time, digitalization on the service side enables enterprises to provide targeted advice and services to customers and move towards intelligence, proactivity, and personalization, helping enterprises to achieve their GT through demand-sidedriven green development [9]. Based on this, the behavioral attitude that digitalization drives GT, represented by ATT, is measured from the production side and the service side in 2 dimensions, and 5 question items are set, which are represented by ATT1, ATT2, ATT3, ATT4, and ATT5, respectively.…”

“…The lack of technical and human resources support in the process of GT in enterprises has led to difficulties in identifying environmental problems, information asymmetry, and an insufficient basis for strategic decision making. It has been pointed out that digitalization as part of economic and social development in a wide range of areas will eventually be internalized in the GT of enterprises [9]. Therefore, in the context of the current urgent need to accelerate the development model, the digitalization process of enterprises will provide inspiration for them to further seek green development and adopt GT, which is an important reason for introducing the exogenous variable of digitalization technology in this paper.…”

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“…Little of the published work on green and digital transition has looked to provide a theoretical framework to help to guide and structure future research or to help to locate it within business and/or social structures, but Zhang et al (2023) used the perspective of socio-technical systems theory to examine the green empowerment of digital technology, in relation to manufacturing industry in China. More generally, Zhang et al (2023) suggested that technical systems theory suggested that managers can play an important role in the interaction between technological and social systems, and this has implications for the role of tourism managers in developing green and digital transition policies.…”

Roadmap to achieving sustainable development: Does digital economy matter in industrial green transformation?

“…The 14th Five‐Year Industrial Green Development Plan points out that digital transformation drives the change of production methods, enhances resource and ecological management by adopting digital technology, and empowers green manufacturing 4 . De depends on technical supremacy to accelerate the greening of industrial production mode under real‐time analysis, state awareness, and precise execution of energy management systems (Zhang, Nutakor, et al, 2023; Zhang, Xu, & Aoki, 2023; Zhou et al, 2021).…”