State ownership, sustainable supply chain management, and firm performance: A natural experiment of the US–China trade conflict

Abstract

Under the increased global uncertainty, this study extends prior research on sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) and firm performance by investigating the divergent performance outcomes between state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and non-SOEs, before and after the US–China trade conflict. Based on a sample of 7647 firm-year observations of Chinese listed firms, we found that SOEs experienced less severe performance impact from the trade conflict. Moreover, SOEs with more SSCM practices, including supplier management and customer cooperation, could harvest more performance improvement after the trade conflict, while non-SOEs receive performance reduction by doing so. Theoretical and practical implications are provided. JEL classification: C12, D21, F51, L33

Sustainable supply chains in a turbulent world: Challenges and opportunities

“…Using the event study methodology, the authors find that SSCM mitigates the negative abnormal stock return of the Covid-19 event. Second, Feng and Jiang (2023) conduct an empirical study on Chinese manufacturers including both state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs) to explore the distinct mechanisms underlying the US–China trade conflict’s effect on financial performance and the moderating effect of SSCM. Analyzing a sample of 7647 firm-year observations, the authors find that SOEs experience less financial performance decline due to the trade conflict; notably, SOEs with higher levels of SSCM implementation exhibit greater performance improvement following the trade conflict, whereas no such effect is observed for non-SOEs.…”