Exploring the nexus between corporate digitalisation and environmental sustainability: The moderating role of slack resources

Abstract

This paper investigated if high digitalisation exposure allows companies to reduce their environmental impacts. Further, the study also deepened the critical role of available slack resources by analysing their possible moderating effects on the relationship between the firm's higher digitalisation exposure and environmental performance. Adopting the unbalanced panel data approach, the authors performed 5 years fixed-effects regression analysis on a sample of 5,481 non-financial listed companies' data derived from the Refinitiv ESG universe, as well as considering the annual constituents lists of the STOXX® Global Digitalisation index. Findings showed digitalisation positively affects specific environmental performance. Moreover, results highlighted that available slack resources negatively moderate the relationship between the firms' higher digitalisation exposure and the sustainable management of resources in internal business and procurement processes. Accordingly, slack resources could stress the profit maximisation logic penalising corporate sustainability.