Disclosed Green Supply Chain Practices and Recorded ISO 14001 Transitions in Chinese Listed Companies

Abstract

Disclosed green supply chain practices and environmental certification may share organizational antecedents without implying improved environmental outcomes. Using licensed CSMAR records for Chinese listed companies, we distinguish recorded certification transitions from persistent status and compare industry-and-year with firm-and-year fixed effects. The main risk set contains 18,424 firm-years recorded as not certified in the preceding calendar year, including 2121 subsequent affirmative records. Each additional prior-year disclosed practice is associated with a 1.423-percentage-point higher transition probability with industry-and-year effects and a 0.827-percentage-point difference with firm-and-year effects (95% confidence interval: 0.133–1.522 percentage points). A stricter no-earlier-observed-certification sensitivity is less precise and its firm-effect interval includes zero. Firm-disjoint comparisons assess stability within previously explored data, not independent external replication. Negative inventory and fixed-asset turnover associations weaken under alternative scales, and validation-sample firm-effect operational estimates are imprecise. A post-review extension to four disclosed emission quantities yields no association surviving the multiplicity correction specified for that extension; selective coverage and inconsistent reporting boundaries further limit inference. These findings provide an observational benchmark for formal governance rather than evidence of first-ever certification, causal effects or substantive environmental improvement.