Sustainable supply chain excellence: how technology integration, CSR/SDG engagement and environmental stewardship drive competitive advantage

Purpose This study examines how technology integration level (til) influences sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) and investigates whether Corporate Social Responsibility/Sustainable Development Goal (CSR/SDG) engagement mediates and environmental stewardship (ES) moderates, this relationship. Design/methodology/approach A three-wave, time-lagged field survey was conducted with 390 supply-chain professionals from manufacturing, technology and service firms in Lahore, Pakistan. Construct validity was established via confirmatory factor analysis. Mediation and first-stage moderated mediation were tested using PROCESS (Models 4 and 7) with 5,000 bootstrap resamples, controlling for tenure and applying marker-variable checks for common method bias. Findings TIL enhances SSCM both directly and indirectly through CSR/SDG engagement. ES significantly strengthens the TIL ? CSR/SDG pathway, yielding a larger conditional indirect effect of TIL on SSCM at higher stewardship levels. The integrated model explains roughly one-third of the variance in SSCM, indicating substantively meaningful sustainability gains when digital, CSR/SDG and stewardship routines are aligned. Practical implications Managers should not treat AI, IoT and blockchain as stand-alone efficiency tools but link them to SDG-aligned CSR routines and embed stewardship metrics in executive scorecards, procurement policies and audits so that digital investments translate into verifiable SSCM improvements. Originality/value The study conceptualizes TIL as an integrated digital capability, identifies CSR/SDG engagement as a governance mechanism and demonstrates ES as a boundary condition within a moderated mediation framework that integrates Resource-Based View, Dynamic Capabilities and Institutional Theory, offering a clear three-step roadmap for sustainable, digitally enabled supply chains.