Covid-19's effect on green supply chains and environmental sustainability; innovative technologies moderation

Abstract

Even though the COVID-19 epidemic caused many problems for global supply chains, it also created opportunities that helped get people interested in cleaner production, sustainability, and business practices that are good for the environment again. This study seeks to examine the pandemic's opportunities for enhancing green supply chain management (GSC-management) and Sustainable environmental-performance by exploring the link between the uncertainty-anxiety of the pandemic, GSC-management, and Sustainable environmental-performance and inspecting the moderating effect of novel technology adoption like big-data analysis capabilities (BDA) and blockchain technologies (BCT) on this relationship. A questionnaire of 517 managers of SMEs in Egypt was used to test and analyze hypotheses with the PLS-SEM method. The findings show that the uncertainty-anxiety of the pandemic improves GSC-management significantly. Also, BDA moderates the link between the uncertainty-anxiety of the pandemic and GSC-management. However, BCT does not moderate that direct link. Also, GSC-management positively affects a firm's sustainable environmental-performance. In addition, GSC-management significantly mediates the correlation between the uncertainty-anxiety of the pandemic and sustainable environmental-performance. The study's findings have massive implications for how SMEs will be managed during COVID-19. Also, it contributes to the theory by using the Social cognitive theory to show how the uncertainty-anxiety of the pandemic positively affects the GSC-management practices and how the dynamic capabilities theory explains the innovative technologies moderating effect of such relationship.