Digital transformation is increasingly recognized as a key mechanism for enterprise upgrading, facilitating innovation, enhancing resource efficiency, and sustaining competitive advantage. This study investigates the influence of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance on the digital transformation of China’s new energy enterprises. Drawing on panel data from A-share listed firms from 2010 to 2023, the analysis assesses both the direct effect of ESG performance and the mediating role of dynamic capabilities, including absorptive, adaptive, and innovative capacities. The empirical results yield three key findings. First, superior ESG performance significantly advances digital transformation by expanding firms’ resource bases and supporting technological renewal. Second, the effect is more pronounced in mature firms and regions with supportive institutional environments and attenuated in early-stage or resource-constrained contexts. Third, the mediation analysis confirms that ESG fosters transformation by strengthening dynamic capabilities. These findings underscore the strategic role of ESG in enabling digital transformation and offer theoretical and practical insights for firms pursuing sustainability-oriented transformation.

This paper examines the relationship between supply chain digitalization and firm-level supply chain resilience using the staggered rollout of China’s Supply Chain Innovation and Application Pilot Program as a quasi-natural experiment. Based on panel data for Chinese A-share listed manufacturing firms from 2012 to 2023, the difference-in-differences estimates indicate that policy exposure is associated with a statistically significant increase in supply chain resilience. The coefficient remains stable across parallel trends tests, placebo exercises, additional controls, high-dimensional fixed effects, and policy-selection diagnostics. Because pilot assignment followed an evaluation process, rather than randomization, the estimates remain subject to possible selection on unobserved characteristics. Subgroup regressions yield larger positive coefficients for firms in less marketized regions, non-state-owned enterprises, and mature firms. Sobel tests support the financing constraint pathway, whereas the information transparency pathway is only marginally significant. Asset turnover, the operating cycle, and inventory alignment are associated with resilience in the outcome equations, but the corresponding first-stage policy coefficients are not robust in the preferred firm- and year-fixed effect specifications. The findings document a positive quasi-experimental association between supply chain digitalization and resilience, while highlighting the institutional and firm-level conditions that shape the estimated relationship.