Research On The Mechanism Of Digital Capability On The Sustainable Development Performance Of Manufacturing Enterprises

Sustainable development concerns national economy and people’s livelihood.The report of the 20 th CPC National Congress emphasizes the great significance of promoting green development and harmonious coexistence between man and nature.Facing the new era,the contradiction between environmental and social problems brought by economic development and people’s pursuit of a better ecological environment is increasingly prominent.As an extension of national power,enterprises are the key subjects to promote high-quality economic and social development and practice the concept of sustainable development,and the pursuit of high-quality sustainable development requires enterprises to give consideration to economic,social and environmental performance.In China,the manufacturing industry is the foundation of a strong country,but also the key field of energy consumption and carbon emissions.Now,the concept of sustainable governance has been put on the agenda,and many Chinese manufacturing enterprises are still facing the severe challenge of sustainable transformation.How to promote manufacturing enterprises to achieve high-quality sustainable transformation,digitalization has become the key.In the report of the 20 th National Congress of the Communist Party of China,it is proposed to promote industrial modernization transformation,take the real economy as the core of high-quality economic development,promote the deep integration of digital economy and manufacturing industry,constantly improve the development level of manufacturing industry,accelerate the realization of information and intelligent development goals of manufacturing industry,integrate the concept of green development into the process of industrial development,and rely on the real economy.Promoting digital economy enabling and creating industrial clusters with core competitiveness will provide support and guarantee for enhancing the comprehensive competitiveness of our country.For this reason,digital capabilities are seen as an effective means to a high-quality development path that will profoundly change the status quo of manufacturing enterprises and bring greater sustainable competitive advantages.At present,there have been some research achievements in the field of sustainable development of digital enabling enterprises,but there are some deficiencies in the current research: First of all,the definition of operationalization of digital capability is not clear.Studies on digitalization and sustainability mainly explore its possible impact on social and environmental value from the perspective of technology,while studies on enterprise sustainable development from the perspective of competence are scarce.Secondly,there is a lack of research on the path for enterprises to improve their sustainable development performance.A few studies have explored the influencing mechanism of sustainable development performance of enterprises from the perspectives of resource-based view,network relationship and institutional environment.However,from the perspective of corporate entrepreneurship,the mechanism of how to improve sustainable development performance through the entrepreneurial process based on digital capabilities needs to be further explored.Finally,the realization of an enterprise’s sustainable development goal is a long-term learning and practice process,which requires the joint efforts of the participants inside and outside the organization.How to maintain the steady improvement of the enterprise’s sustainable development performance needs to identify and analyze the key influencing factors in this process.These questions need further exploration.Through the above research gaps,this research takes Chinese manufacturing enterprises as the research object,and uses digital capabilities as the logical starting point to explore the mechanism of enterprise sustainable development performance.This study attempts to answer the following questions: First,how can manufacturing enterprises use digital capabilities to improve sustainability performance? Second,how does digital capability translate into sustainable development performance of manufacturing enterprises? Are there multiple paths of action between them? Third,in the relationship between digital capability and sustainable performance of manufacturing enterprises,are there contingency factors affecting this mechanism?In order to solve the above problems,this study combined with the preliminary theoretical model obtained from the exploratory case study,and according to the research logic of "capability-behavior-performance",built a complex mechanism model of digital capability on the sustainable development performance of manufacturing enterprises.Based on enterprise capability theory,entrepreneurial process theory,organizational change theory and network embeddedness theory,corporate entrepreneurship is introduced as the intermediary variable,and network embeddedness and organizational readiness as the moderating variable,to analyze the internal mechanism between digital capability and enterprise sustainable development performance.The specific research contents are as follows: First,through the analysis of existing literature,the paper discusses the relevant research progress of digital capability,corporate entrepreneurship,corporate sustainable development performance,organizational readiness and network embeddedness.Secondly,it interprets the connotations and characteristics of digital ability and the operation logic between variables in the way of multi-case comparison.Thirdly,on the basis of case study and theoretical analysis,the mechanism model of digital capability on enterprise sustainable development performance is constructed,and 30 research hypotheses are proposed.Fourthly,questionnaires were distributed to manufacturing enterprises in northeast China and South China,and 468 valid data collected were tested for reliability and validity by SPSS 26.0 and Amos26.0,the hypotheses of this study were tested by regression analysis and bootstrap analysis.Fifth,the similarities and differences between the conclusions of this study and those of previous scholars are discussed,and the theoretical contributions and management implications of this study are obtained,and the limitations and future prospects of this study are further clarified.The conclusions of this study are as follows: First,the complex relationship between digital capability and sustainable development performance of manufacturing enterprises is identified and tested.The digital operation capability has a significant positive effect on the sustainable development performance of manufacturing enterprises,while the digital dynamic capability has an inverted U-shaped relationship with the sustainable development performance of manufacturing enterprises.The matching of digital operation capability and digital dynamic capability can positively influence the sustainable development performance of manufacturing enterprises better.Second,the paper examines the multiple mediating effects of corporate entrepreneurship on the relationship between digital capability and sustainable development performance of manufacturing enterprises.The two dimensions of digital capability have a significant positive effect on corporate entrepreneurship.The innovation dimension of corporate entrepreneurship has a significant positive effect on the sustainable development performance of manufacturing enterprises,while the new business development dimension and strategic renewal dimension have an inverted U-shaped relationship with the sustainable development performance of manufacturing enterprises.Corporate entrepreneurship plays an intermediary role between digital capability and sustainable development performance of manufacturing enterprises.Thirdly,the moderating effect of network embedment is tested.Network embedding has a significant positive moderating effect on the relationship between digital operation capability and entrepreneurial innovation and new business development,but has no significant moderating effect on the relationship between digital operation capability and strategic renewal.Fourthly,the moderating effect of organizational readiness is tested.Organizational readiness has a positive moderating effect on the relationship between digital dynamic capability and entrepreneurial dimensions.Organizational readiness has a significant positive moderating effect on the relationship between digital operation capability and innovation and strategic renewal in corporate entrepreneurship,but has no significant moderating effect on the relationship between digital operation capability and new business development.Organizational readiness has a positive moderating effect on the relationship between digital dynamic capability and all dimensions of corporate entrepreneurship.This study complements the research on the complex relationship between digital capability and sustainable development performance of manufacturing enterprises,and has certain marginal theoretical value.Firstly,from the perspective of micro capability,digital capability is divided into digital operation capability and digital dynamic capability,which is the enrichment of the division system of enterprise digital capability structure.Second,from the perspective of corporate entrepreneurship,this study explores the multiple mediating mechanisms of enterprise sustainable development performance under the background of digital empowerment,reveals the specific path of transforming manufacturing enterprises’ digital capability into enterprise sustainable development performance,and enricfies the classic theoretical framework of "competence-behavior-performance".This paper explains the mechanism of digital capability affecting the sustainable development performance of manufacturing enterprises by influencing the entrepreneurial behavior of enterprises,and provides a new idea for the research on sustainable development of enterprises.Thirdly,organizational readiness and network embeddedness are included in this study,and the moderating effects of both on the transformation of digital capability to sustainable development performance are analyzed from the perspective of both internal and external organizations,which helps to deepen the scientific understanding of the transformation of digital capability to digital behavior,and expand and enrich the theory of sustainable digital entrepreneurship management.This paper will be useful for driving Chinese manufacturing enterprises to realize high-quality sustainable development and build their digital sustainable competitive advantage.