Because of the changes taking place in the local and global market and business environment, the increase in competitiveness, globalization and various and numerous disturbances, which have presented major challenges for firms and organizations (Liao & Hu, 2007), international and global firms have increased their interest in improving their organizational capabilities to create new competitive advantages and to thereby make them superior to their competitors (Lee & Kim, 2013).
Despite the importance of acquiring competitive advantages in a turbulent environment (Nagano, 2020), the means to acquire this advantage have become more difficult (Permatasari et al., 2022) for several reasons, including financial crises and global health crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic (Joshi & Sharma, 2022). The COVID-19 pandemic’s disturbances have increased scholarly interest in the sources of excellence and innovation (Boiral et al., 2021; Gregurec et al., 2021). The pandemic has changed the life and the business scene in every country (Donthu & Gustafsson, 2020; Fairlie, 2020; Kwok & Koh, 2020), created an environment of instability and ambiguity and caused significant disruptions in the business environment (Altig et al., 2020; Sharma et al., 2020).
Supply chains have been one of the most affected business aspects during the pandemic (Joshi & Sharma, 2022). Repeated closures and precautionary measures by countries have disrupted and interrupted supply chains (Hohenstein, 2022) and caused the loss of competitive value for business organizations. Goel et al. (2020) and Grida et al. (2020) similarly found that supply chains around the world were negatively and significantly affected at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic because the precautionary measures taken by the governments of various countries of the world disrupted supply chains, which, according to Goel et al. (2021), led to a failure in global trade and affected multinational and national firms alike. This outcome, in turn, led to a reduction in firms’ profits and a decrease in performance levels (Salvatore, 2020).
Managers, officials and public policymakers have been faced with various challenges induced by the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly regarding the sustainability of supply chains and the demand in the global market (Muhammad et al., 2022; Tirkolaee et al., 2022). However, several challenges, such as environmental challenges, have been neglected for a long time (Kusi-Sarpong et al., 2022). In the last few decades, several studies have highlighted the importance of focusing on activities directed at preserving the environment (Maaaz et al., 2021). These studies have confirmed that the success of organizations and firms depends on their external environment and the cleanliness and safety of this environment. Frare and Beuren (2021) asserted that the environmental aspect is, therefore, no longer a luxury for firms, but a strategic and competitive necessity to create competitive advantages.
According to the resource-based view (RBV) theory, firms and organizations can use the results of their various resources and combine these resources with different activities to generate added value for their products and services, thereby creating sustainable competitive advantages (Nagano, 2020). With the importance of RBV in understanding the ability of companies to create a competitive advantage through optimal exploitation of resources, several scholars (see Hart, 1995; Hart & Dowell, 2011) posit that firms’ interest in the surrounding external environment maximizes their use of natural resources and reduces waste, thus leading to their competitive advantage (Hamdoun, 2020) and the natural resource-based view (NRBV).
Supply chain sustainability is one of the basic aspects of creating added value for customers (Avilés-González et al., 2017). The supply chain is a group or network of interconnected relationships that aim to increase profitability and create added value for customers. Firms’ interest in the flow of products and services from production to customers leads to customer satisfaction and creates a competitive advantage (Ivanov et al., 2017). With the environmental turmoil that the world is witnessing in this period, firms’ interest in promoting environmental initiatives in the supply chain will improve their optimal use of resources, increase efficiency and reduce waste (Permatasari et al., 2022); help them achieve economic, social and environmental sustainability (Sony, 2019); and help them achieve environmental responsibility, which has become a strategic orientation for international firms to improve their brand image—particularly in light of the organizational and moral pressures on these firms to become more oriented towards environmental responsibility (Liu et al., 2021; Park et al., 2022).
Phuah and Fernando (2015) defined green supply chain management as ‘management that focuses on the traditional aspects of the supply chain with greater attention to environmental issues and issues’ (p. Xx). Firms’ orientation of their organizational capabilities towards the environment enhances the growth of the green supply chain (Ramakrishna, 2020). The success of environmental initiatives in the supply chain can be measured by several indicators, including providing environment-friendly products and services, adding new methods of packaging and designing processes oriented towards the environment or reducing the waste of energy and natural resources in the supply chain (Jo & Kwon, 2022; Wu et al., 2012; Zhu et al., 2008).
Previous literature has focused on the essential and positive role that intellectual capital plays in enhancing sources of building sustainable competitive advantages and improving organizational performance in general (Al-Khatib, 2022; Dost et al., 2016). With the importance of intellectual capital as one of the antecedents for improving performance, several previous studies have focused on the positive relationship between intellectual capital and supply chain performance (Khan et al., 2021; Mubarik et al., 2021; Shou et al., 2018a; Shou et al., 2018b). Firms’ exploitation of their human resource knowledge and skills and the optimal use of their intellectual capital enhances their ability to innovate, leading to the creation of new ways to improve the supply chain, thus improving performance for the chain and adding value to customers.
From an environmental management perspective, green intellectual capital is described as the sum of existing knowledge and skills used within the firm in organizational and environment-oriented processes and activities and which give the firm a competitive advantage (Malik et al., 2020; Yusliza et al., 2020). The knowledge-based view theory posits that green intellectual capital contributes to increasing the exchange of knowledge and experiences among individuals within a firm, as well as increasing and sharing knowledge at the organizational level, particularly the environmental knowledge and skills required to achieve sustainable performance (Yong et al., 2019; Yusliza et al., 2020). Therefore, firms’ exploitation of their intellectual capital oriented towards environmental initiatives improves the performance of the green supply chain by providing new knowledge and skill contributions that are used to improve the performance of the green supply chain (Khan et al., 2021; Ullah et al., 2021; Wang et al., 2022). Firms’ use of their information resources and management of information flow among supply chains enhances organizational capability to face operational risks and increases the speed of firms’ responses to various environmental changes (Huang et al., 2020; Wankmüller & Reiner, 2020), thereby enhancing green supply chain performance (Jemai et al., 2020; Micheli et al., 2020).
Several empirical studies have confirmed that firms’ use of Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies—such as big data analytics, artificial intelligence and cloud computing—create new opportunities for the growth of emerging economies (Dalmarco et al., 2019; Lee et al., 2020). These technologies have helped firms improve their competitiveness, which is positively reflected in their organizational and innovation performance (Li et al., 2021; Nsakanda, 2021). Big data analytics provides new and different insights on improving the performance of supply chains (Alsadi et al., 2021; Lee & Mangalaraj, 2022; Maheshwari et al., 2021; Tiwari et al., 2018). Moreover, big data analytics can be used to improve decision-making and solve various problems that may arise in supply chain channels (Yu et al., 2021) as well as improve supply chain performance because the supply chain is highly dependent on information (Xiang et al., 2021). Thus, big data analytics can provide firms with greater control over the supply chain and reduce risks and disruptions from external causes. According to Kache and Seuring (2017), firms’ use of big data analytics in supply chain management improves the performance level of the chain, leading to a competitive advantage.
With the importance of big data analytics capabilities in improving supply chain performance, numerous studies have addressed the huge potential in big data’s use in environmental initiatives and trends (El-Kassar & Singh, 2019). Big data analytics contributes to providing statistical and mathematical models such as predictive models that can be used to discover new patterns that contribute to increasing general and environmental innovations (Borah et al., 2021; Chen et al., 2006) as well as improving organizational activities and increasing the efficiency of processes, leading to reducing waste in the supply chain (Bag et al., 2020; Benzidia et al., 2021; Zhan et al., 2018).
The industrial sector is one of the main economic sectors in Jordan (Abdallah et al., 2018; Al-Khatib & Al-Ghanem, 2021). This sector has witnessed noticeable increase in growth, particularly in the past few years, because this sector comprises several firms characterized by a high knowledge density that uses advanced technology (Barghouth et al., 2021). Overall, this study aimed to answer two research questions (RQ):
RQ1. What is the effect of green intellectual capital (green human capital, green structural capital and green relational capital) on green supply chain performance in the manufacturing sector in Jordan?
RQ2. Do big data analytics capabilities have a moderator role in the relationship between green intellectual capital (green human capital, green structural capital and green relational capital) and green supply chain performance in the manufacturing sector in Jordan?
The remainder of this manuscript is organized as follows: Section 2 reviews the theoretical framework and hypotheses development; Section 3 presents the methodology; Section 4 presents data analysis and results; and Section 5 presents the discussion and conclusion.