Digital Technology-Enabled Configurations for Sustainable Supply Chain Resilience: A Dynamic QCA Study of Chinese Manufacturing Firms

Supply chain resilience (SCR) has become increasingly important for maintaining stable and sustainable manufacturing operations under growing environmental uncertainty. However, existing studies mainly focus on the net effects of individual factors, providing limited understanding of how digitalization interacts with technological, organizational, and environmental conditions in shaping resilience over time. Drawing on the Technology–Organization–Environment (TOE) framework, this study examines how configurations of digitalization, research and development (R&D) investment, return on assets, asset turnover, and industry concentration are associated with supply chain resilience in Chinese manufacturing firms. Using a balanced panel of 300 firm-year observations from 60 Chinese listed manufacturing firms during 2019–2023, this study applies dynamic qualitative comparative analysis (DQCA) to identify multiple configurations associated with high and non-high supply chain resilience. The results show that no single antecedent condition is necessary for high resilience. Five configurations are identified for high SCR and five for non-high SCR, indicating equifinality and configurational asymmetry. The high-SCR solutions include both R&D-centered and digitalization-centered pathways, whereas low digitalization appears in four of the five non-high-SCR configurations. The relative coverage of these pathways changes across 2019–2023, with one digitalization-centered configuration (G2) becoming more prominent in the later years. These findings provide longitudinal configurational evidence on how different combinations of technological, organizational, and environmental conditions are associated with resilience over time.