Advancing Sustainable Organizational Performance Through Digital-Enabled Sustainability Management Accounting: An Empirical Investigation

This paper discusses digital capability and its potential translation into sustainable organizational performance through the integration of sustainable management accounting and high-quality managerial decision-making. Even though previous studies acknowledge the importance of digital technologies and sustainability practices, the current literature mostly analyzes them separately, and no empirical models explain how digital capability can be translated into sustainability outcomes through internal decision-making and accounting processes. To fill this gap, this paper constructs and proves a Digital-Enabled Sustainability Management Accounting (DSMA) framework based on Dynamic Capabilities Theory, the Knowledge-Based View, and the Technology–Organization–Environment framework. Based on Survey data from 667 respondents in the financial services industry and Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM), the results indicate that digital capability can significantly contribute to sustainability performance by increasing accounting integration and decision quality. Although technological readiness enhances such relations, it does so with only a low degree of influence, meaning it has a supportive rather than a transformative effect. The research is valuable because it contributes to sustainability theory, provides a solid empirical database that is understudied, and has practical implications for organizations striving to implement digitally enabled sustainability initiatives.