The Roles of Green Entrepreneurial Concerns and Sustainable Management of Supply Chains Post COVID-19

Abstract

Scholars have begun to pay more attention to green entrepreneurial concerns (GEC) and sustainable management of supply chain (SMSC) practices, but the impact of these factors on a firm’s competitive performance (FCP) remains unclear, especially post COVID-19. Although previous studies have examined GEC and SMSC practices, they have mainly focused on assessing their effects on general firm performance, not specifically on FCP and the post-COVID-19 perspective. Therefore, this study investigates the direct links between GEC and SMSC, and between SMSC and FCP from a COVID-19 standpoint. This paper also examines the mediating effect of SMSC on the GEC–FCP relationship, and the moderating effect of digital technologies on the GEC–SMSC correlation. This study is a survey-based empirical research. The survey forms or questionnaires were distributed to 330 companies in Yemen with a response rate of 83.9%. The conceptual framework was assessed with structural equation modeling. The analysis outcomes indicate that GEC significantly affects SMSC and then FCP. The outcomes also unveil that SMSC mediates the GEC–FCP relation. Furthermore, digital technologies (e.g. artificial intelligence and big data analytics) significantly moderate the relationship between GEC and SMSC. This paper contributes to the existing literature by (i) expanding the limited findings of previous SMSC works by delivering a novel factor of GEC to boost the FCP via SMSC post the pandemic; and (ii) increasing knowledge about the effect of digital technologies on advancing SMSC and later FCP post the pandemic. Different from other academic works that have observed SMSC as a direct predicting factor for firm performance, the research offers novel insights about the capability of SMSC to mediate the relationship between GEC and FCP, and digital technologies can support the incorporation of GEC and SMSC for companies’ internal operations, particularly in the era of uncertainty such as in the post-pandemic times.