The Effect of Resilience on Social and Environmental Sustainability and the Role of Digital Tools: Evidence from Bangladeshi Fashion Supply Chain

There is increasing interest in examining the interplay between resilience, sustainability, and digital tools within supply chains (SC). However, finding an effective and equitable solution remains a concern. This study aims to explore the best SC practices that combine sustainability, resilience and digital tools. Moreover, it investigates how resilience constructs influence social and environmental sustainability with the moderating role of digital tools. This study considers four resilience constructs—visibility, agility, flexibility, and collaboration—and several digital tools: blockchain, internet of things, big data predictive analytics, artificial intelligence, and cloud-based platforms, which are commonly cited in the SC literature. Moreover, it focuses on internal and external social sustainability and waste management and pollution/emission of environmental sustainability that are critically important for SC actors. As a method, a systematic literature review is conducted that highlights interactive mapping of the concepts. Subsequently, two cross-sectional studies have been performed through the Structural Equation Model with data from 190 Bangladeshi fashion SC actors. The results show that visibility, agility, and collaboration have a positive impact on social and environmental sustainability. Knowledge sharing, enhanced visibility, reduced intermediaries, and smart contracts facilitate the interaction between sustainability, resilience, and digital tools. Moreover, Bangladeshi FSC actors emphasize transparency in information flow, agile strategic planning, and collaboration that are more likely to achieve better social and environmental sustainability. Digital tools have been found to moderate the relationship with the positive effects of visibility for social and environmental sustainability. However, digital tools have amplified the negative effects of collaboration for social sustainability, and the negative effects of agility for the environmental sustainability model. This study makes a theoretical contribution and managerial insights with some new findings, including prioritizing resilience constructs and the extent of the digital tools needed to achieve sustainability. However, it focuses solely on the FSC sector in Bangladesh without considering economic sustainability and resource efficiency management of environmental sustainability.