Hiding in the supply chain: Investigating supplier eco-innovations when buyer and supplier have common owners

Liu, Zhen-yuan (Ralph), Li, Yu-min, Tse, Ying Kei (Mike) ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6174-0326, Tan, Kim Hua and Kumar, Ajay 2026. Hiding in the supply chain: Investigating supplier eco-innovations when buyer and supplier have common owners. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 222 , 124409. 10.1016/j.techfore.2025.124409

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Abstract

Common owners along the supply chain (COSC) indicate shareholders who simultaneously hold the equity stakes of upstream suppliers and downstream buyers. Despite the burgeoning interest in COSC's influences on supply chain actors' practices, its impact on supplier eco-innovations remains unexplored. Drawing on resource dependence theory, this paper proposes a set of competing hypotheses to critically investigate the relationship between COSC and supplier eco-innovations and the moderating roles of suppliers' internal environmental awareness and external legitimate pressure. Analysing a unique dataset of 1841 buyer-supplier pair-year observations of Chinese A-share listed firms between 2003 and 2021, we find that COSC functions as a new form of shadow governance within the supply chain to hamper supplier eco-innovations. However, such the negative effect can be converted into positive ones when suppliers obtain higher environmental awareness, encounter more stringent environmental regulations, and receive intensified media coverage. The results remain robust under various robustness checks, yielding important implications for managerial practice and policy development.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > Business (Including Economics)
Additional Information:	RRS policy applied
Publisher:	Elsevier
ISSN:	0040-1625
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	10 November 2025
Date of Acceptance:	21 October 2025
Last Modified:	10 Nov 2025 12:30
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/182239

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