Leveraging Green Capabilities and Digital Accounting Under ESG Pressure: Strategic Insights From an Emerging Market's Global Value Chains

Abstract

ESG-driven buyer governance in global value chains compels emerging-market suppliers to internalize new bundles of green and digital capabilities to remain competitive. This study examines how manufacturing firms in such contexts can orchestrate these capabilities under ESG pressure to achieve sustainable organizational performance. Anchored in the natural resource-based view (NRBV) and dynamic capabilities perspective (DCV), we develop and test an integrative framework in which sustainability management accounting (SMA) operates as a capability conduit linking green knowledge integration capability (GKIC) and green organizational culture (GOC) to performance, while business analytics adoption (BAA) functions as a digital amplifier that strengthens the SMA–SOP relationship. Using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) on survey data from 412 professionals in Bangladesh's export-oriented manufacturing sector, the findings demonstrate that SMA mediates and BAA amplifies the impact of green capabilities on performance. Robustness diagnostics (PLSpredict and IPMA) confirm predictive validity and managerial priority areas. Practically, integrating SMA and BAA helps firms improve ESG audit pass rates, retain preferred-supplier status, and sustain export continuity in international markets. The study advances theory by conceptualizing the GKIC–SMA–BAA configuration as a scalable pathway for ESG-driven competitiveness in global value chains.