How Digital Transformation Shapes Corporate Financial Flexibility: The Phased Moderating Role of Supply Chain Resilience

As a key engine of corporate innovation, digital transformation permeates business management. Can digital transformation improve corporate financial flexibility by leveraging the external supply chain? Our sample comprises Chinese listed companies over the period from 2015 to 2024, employing Python 3.10 crawling to measure the degree of digital transformation and utilizing the entropy weight method to construct supply chain resilience. Using a moderated mediation model, this analysis examines how corporate innovation mediates the relationship between digital transformation and financial flexibility, and how supply chain resilience exerts a phased moderating effect along this pathway. The findings reveal the following: (1) Digital transformation has a positive effect on financial flexibility, where corporate innovation plays a mediating role. (2) The promoting effect of digital transformation on financial flexibility exhibits significant heterogeneity, varying with firm-specific micro-level characteristics and internal control quality. (3) Supply chain resilience plays a significant moderating role throughout the entire mediation path. It positively moderates the chain of “digital transformation → corporate innovation → financial flexibility”. This study provides empirical evidence on the mechanisms of digital transformation’s impact on corporate financial flexibility and offers a theoretical view for evaluating the outcomes of digital transformation from a financial perspective.