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An emerging body of literature has pinpointed the role of supply chain structure in influencing the extent to which supply chain members disclose information about their internal practices and performance. Nevertheless, empirical research investigating the effects of firm-level relational embeddedness on network-level transparency still lags. Drawing on social network analysis, this research examines the effect of relational embeddedness on supply chain transparency and the contingent role of digitalization in the context of environmental, social and governance (ESG) information disclosure.

In their empirical analysis, the authors collected secondary data from the Bloomberg database about 2,229 firms and 14,007 ties organized in 107 extended supply chains. The authors employed supplier and customer concentration metrics to measure relational embeddedness and performed multiple econometric models to test the hypothesis.

The authors found a positive effect of supplier concentration on supply chain transparency, but the effect of customer concentration was not significant. Additionally, the digitalization of focal firms reinforced the impact of supplier concentration on supply chain transparency.

The study findings contribute by underscoring the critical effect of relational embeddedness on supply chain transparency, extending prior literature on social network analysis, providing compelling evidence for the intersection of digitalization and supply chain management, and drawing important implications for practices.

Prior research has produced conflicting results on the relationship between firm-level patenting activity and financial performance. To identify a factor that impacts the results, this study tests whether the level of customer-base concentration (defined as focusing on a small number of major customer sales transactions) changes the relationship between firm-level patenting activity and financial performance (return on assets: ROA).

Using a longitudinal secondary dataset from Japanese manufacturers from 1991 to 2016, this study investigates the interaction effect between firm-level patenting activity and customer-base concentration. With additional analysis using multiple profitability measures, this study provides robust evidence that customer-base concentration is an important factor in changing the relationship between firm-level patenting activity and financial performance.

The analysis results show that there is a positive relationship between firm-level patenting activity and ROA. In addition, this relationship is positively moderated by the customer-base concentration. This means that suppliers can improve the performance of the patenting activity by concentrating on their customer base.

By identifying a moderating factor between patenting activity and financial performance, this study advances the interpretation of conflicting results in patent research. Moreover, this study reveals a situation where customer-base concentration, which has a direct negative impact on financial performance, leads to better financial performance. This also indicates that firm-level patenting activities may compensate for the negative aspects of customer-base concentration.

This study examines the impact of the US government customer concentration and product innovation in supplier firms. The US government customer concentration is defined as the proportion of sales made by a supplier firm to the US government as a major customer. To measure product innovation, the author uses two key metrics: the number of patents and the novelty of the patents. The results indicate that a supplier firm’s relationship with the US government, as measured by the tenure of the relationship, has a significant impact on product innovation. Furthermore, the author shows that changes in the composition of the US government, Senate can also affect the level of innovation in supplier firms.

This study employs the Compustat’s Segment Customer database and the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Patent Citation database to gather information regarding patents granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The author also incorporates data from US Congressional committees from the 96th to 115th Congresses to assess the effect of changes in seniority of US senators on influential committees on the firm’s innovation. For a robustness test, the author utilizes a propensity score matched analysis.

The author demonstrates that a firm’s dependence on the US government as a customer channel for an extended period negatively impacts the firm’s innovation efficiency, as measured by the number of patents, citations and novelty of the patents. In addition, the author provides evidence that changes in the seniority of US senators on influential committees have a significant impact on firms located in the same state as the new senior senators. These firms decrease innovative efforts due to the political connections, resulting in lower levels of innovation. These findings are robust after controlling the endogeneity issues. In conclusion, this study contributes to the existing literature by offering insight into the relationship between customer concentration and firm innovation. The findings highlight the importance of considering the relationship between firms and their customer base in determining innovation outcomes.

This study demonstrates that a heavy reliance on the US government as a customer channel has a detrimental impact on a firm’s innovation efficiency. Furthermore, the author analyzes the exogenous shock of changes in the seniority of US senators on the relationship between customer dependence and innovation. By utilizing a propensity matched sample, the author addresses endogeneity concerns and provides robust evidence for empirical findings. In conclusion, this study sheds light on the complex relationship between customer dependence and firm innovation, particularly in the context of the US government as a sales channel.

This research investigates whether focal firms employ strategic supply chain information disclosure, focusing on the concealment of supplier and customer identities, as part of their supply chain environmental risk management strategies (supplier sustainability risk and customer loss risk, respectively).

Using a panel dataset of Chinese listed firms from 2009 to 2019 and utilizing the suppliers’ environmental punishment of peer firms (peer events) as an exogenous shock and employing ordinary least squares (OLS) estimation, this study conducts a regression analysis to test how focal firms disclose the identities of their suppliers and customers.

Our results indicate that focal firms prefer to hide the identities of their suppliers and customers following the environmental punishment of peer firms’ suppliers. In addition, supplier concentration weakens the effect of withholding supplier identities, whereas customer concentration strengthens the effect of hiding customer identities. Mechanism analysis shows that firms hide supplier identities to avoid their reputation being affected and hide customer identities to prevent the deterioration of customers’ reputations and thus impact their market share.

Our study reveals that reputation spillover is another crucial factor in supply chain transparency. It is also pioneering in applying the anonymity theory to explain focal firms’ information disclosure strategy in supply chains.

Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology that uses cryptography to ensure transmission and access security, which provides solutions to numerous challenges to complex supply networks. The purpose of this paper is to empirically test the impact of blockchain implementation on shareholder value varying from internal and external complexity from the complex adaptive systems (CASs) perspective. It further explores how business diversification, supply chain (SC) concentration and environmental complexity affect the relationship between blockchain implementation and shareholder value.

Based on 138 blockchain implementation announcements of listed companies on the Chinese A-share stock market, the authors use event study methodology to evaluate the impact of blockchain implementation on shareholder value.

The results show that blockchain implementation has a positive impact on shareholder value, and this impact will be moderated by business diversification, SC concentration and environmental complexity. In addition, environmental complexity exerts a moderating effect on SC concentration. In the post hoc analysis, the authors further explore the impact of blockchain implementation on long-term operational performance.

This is the first research empirically examining the effect of blockchain implementation on shareholder value varying from internal and external complexity from the CASs perspective. This paper provides evidence of the different effects of blockchain implementation on short- and long-term performance. It adds to the interdisciplinary research of information systems (IS) and operations management (OM).

This study explores the impact of carbon neutrality policies on Chinese stock market from a supply chain perspective. Specifically, the carbon policy refers to the Action Plan for Carbon Dioxide Peaking Before 2030 (the Plan) in China.

This paper is based on the resource dependence theory (RDT) and applies the event study methodology to explore the impact. It uses the cross-sectional regression model to reveal the moderating effect of supply chain characteristics on the stock market reaction with a data set of 354 listed companies in A-shares (excluding ChiNext and SME board).

The promulgation of the Plan shows a significant negative stock market reaction. Customer concentration, out-degree centrality and smart supply chains (SSCs) have a significant negative moderating effect. In-degree centrality and supplier concentration have a significant positive moderating effect. Furthermore, the conclusions concerning out-degree centrality, supplier concentration and SSCs are counterintuitive.

For policymakers, the study results provide a reference for evaluating the carbon neutrality policy. For managers, this study provides theoretical support for strategically adjusting and designing supply chain structures in the context of advocating peak carbon dioxide emissions and carbon neutrality.

This paper is the first attempt that includes the supply chain structure factors into the impact of carbon neutrality policies on the stock market.

Based on signaling theory, this paper aims to explore the impact of supply chain transparency (SCT) on firms' bank loan (BL) and supply chain financing (SCF) in the context of voluntary disclosure of supplier and customer lists.

Based on panel data collected from Chinese-listed firms between 2012 and 2021, fixed-effect models and a series of robustness checks are used to test the predictions.

First, improving SCT by disclosing major suppliers and customers promotes BL but inhibits SCF. Specifically, customer transparency (CT) is more influential in SCF than supplier transparency (ST). Second, supplier concentration (SC) weakens SCT’s positive impact on BL while reducing its negative impact on SCF. Third, customer concentration (CC) strengthens the positive impact of SCT on BL but intensifies its negative impact on SCF. Last, these findings are basically more pronounced in highly competitive industries.

This study contributes to the SCT literature by investigating the under-explored practice of supply chain list disclosure and revealing its dual impact on firms' access to financing offerings (i.e. BL and SCF) based on signaling theory. Additionally, it expands the understanding of the boundary conditions affecting the relationship between SCT and firm financing, focusing on supply chain concentration. Moreover, it advances signaling theory by exploring how financing providers interpret the SCT signal and enriches the understanding of BL and SCF antecedents from a supply chain perspective.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) decoupling indicates a misalignment between how firms report CSR and what firms actually practice with respect to CSR. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between CSR decoupling and financial performance and the factors affecting this relationship.

This paper collects and combines secondary panel data from multiple sources of Chinese listed firms from 2008 to 2020 to test the direct impact of CSR decoupling on firms’ financial performance and the moderating role of customer structure and operational slack.

This paper finds that CSR decoupling is negatively associated with firms’ financial performance. These findings further suggest that the negative relationship can be suppressed by customer stability and operational slack, but amplified by customer concentration. These conclusions remain robust to alternate measures of independent and dependent variables and narrower samples.

In the literature, the effect of CSR on firms’ financial performance is inconclusive. This is the first study to examine the impact of CSR decoupling on firms’ financial performance and the factors affecting this relationship. This paper contributes to the CSR decoupling literature from an operations and supply chain management perspective.

Despite the increasing interest in the role of supply chain concentration (SCC) in improving performance, its influence on firms' sustainability performance remains unexplored, as do the underlying mechanisms of this relationship. Drawing on resource dependence theory, the authors investigate the relationship between SCC and manufacturing firms' sustainability performance and the moderating roles of operational slack and information transparency.

The authors use secondary data from 3,581 manufacturing firms listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share stock markets from 2006 to 2020 to conduct an empirical analysis using panel data regression models.

Manufacturing firms' SCC is negatively related to sustainability performance until it reaches a certain point, where SCC positively affects sustainability performance, presenting a U-shaped relationship. In addition, operational slack represented by a quick ratio moderates the relationship between SCC and sustainability performance by flattening the curve. Operational slack represented by receivable turnover ratio moderates the relationship between SCC and sustainability performance by steepening the curve and shifting the turning point left. Information transparency strengthens the effect of SCC on the sustainability performance by steepening the curve.

This investigation provides a comprehensive view of the SCC– sustainability performance relationship.

This study aims to investigate the impact of supply chain concentration (SCC) on corporate research and development (R&D) investment and determine the moderating roles of industry concentration and financing constraints on the relationship between SCC and R&D investment.

The study collected data from Chinese listed companies, used the fixed effects model to test the research hypotheses and further used the two-stage Heckman test and propensity score matching (PSM) to address potential endogeneity issues.

The result reveals a negative impact of SCC on corporate R&D investment. In addition, industry concentration mitigates the negative impact of SCC on corporate R&D investment, but financing constraints strengthen the negative impact.

This study introduces the concept of SCC and empirically tests its effect on R&D investment, further explaining the lack of corporate innovation. This study inspires companies to strengthen SC management and weigh the level of SCC with environmental factors.