Digital Oasis: How does digital-real integration improve corporate green governance?

Abstract

The deep integration of the digital economy and the real economy at the technological level has not only reshaped the production organization modes and resource allocation logic of traditional manufacturing enterprises, but also provided new pathways for enhancing corporate green governance capability. Based on the time-based view and organizational adaptation theory, this study takes Chinese A-share listed firms from 2009 to 2024 as the research sample to systematically examine the impact of digital-real integration on corporate green governance performance and its underlying mechanisms. The findings indicate that: (1) digital-real integration significantly improves corporate green governance performance, suggesting that the deep coupling between digital technologies and real industrial technological systems helps optimize corporate green governance systems and enhance governance capability; (2) mechanism analysis reveals that digital-real integration promotes green governance performance by improving firms’ response agility and enhancing knowledge orchestration capability, thereby strengthening firms’ dynamic adaptability to environmental changes; and (3) heterogeneity analysis shows that the promoting effect of digital-real integration on corporate green governance is more pronounced among firms with high media attention, firms in heavily polluting industries, and non-state-owned enterprises. This study extends the research framework of corporate green governance from a dynamic perspective, broadens the explanatory boundaries of the time-based view and organizational adaptation theory, and provides empirical evidence and practical implications for improving corporate green governance capability in emerging digital contexts.