State ownership, sustainable supply chain management, and firm performance: A natural experiment of the US–China trade conflict

Under the increased global uncertainty, this study extends prior research on sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) and firm performance by investigating the divergent performance outcomes between state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and non-SOEs, before and after the US–China trade conflict. Based on a sample of 7647 firm-year observations of Chinese listed firms, we found that SOEs experienced less severe performance impact from the trade conflict. Moreover, SOEs with more SSCM practices, including supplier management and customer cooperation, could harvest more performance improvement after the trade conflict, while non-SOEs receive performance reduction by doing so. Theoretical and practical implications are provided. JEL classification: C12, D21, F51, L33