The impact of paths of digital innovation on sustainable development performance: evidence from Chinese manufacturing industry

Purpose This paper aims to explore the configurations of slack resource, digital infrastructure and digital capability for achieving digital innovation, and the impacts of different configurations achieving digital innovation on sustainable development performance. Design/methodology/approach This paper combined fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis with propensity score matching to analyze the data from 2,138 Chinese manufacturing firms. Findings Results reveal that three equifinal paths can achieve high digital innovation, namely, digital infrastructure utilization type, human resource slack-digital infrastructure acquisition type and slack resource acquisition-utilization synchronous type. Further analysis indicates that three paths achieving high digital innovation have different effects on sustainable development performance. Originality/value Drawing on resource orchestration theory and configurational perspective, the research enriches the understanding of causal complexity underlying digital innovation, and provides theoretical guidance for improving digital innovation and subsequent sustainable development performance.