How do sustainability capabilities create retail performance over time? dynamic evidence from U.S. and Chinese retailers

This study examines how sustainability-oriented technological innovation, sustainable supply chain management, and corporate social responsibility relate to environmental and manager-reported organisational performance in retail firms over time. Drawing on the natural resource-based view, institutional theory, and stakeholder theory, the study analyses a 12-wave monthly panel of 2410 retailers in the United States and China, comprising 26,998 firm-month observations. A multi-group hierarchical Bayesian continuous-time dynamic structural equation model estimates within-firm relationships, effects over one-, three-, and six-month intervals, time-varying mediation, and country differences. Technological innovation predicts environmental performance in both countries, but it strengthens sustainable supply chain management only in China. Sustainable supply chain management predicts organisational performance in both countries. Corporate social responsibility predicts environmental performance in both countries, while its direct short-run organisational effect is positive in the United States and negative in China. Environmental performance converts into organisational performance, and all three proposed indirect effects emerge, only in China during the focal six-month window. Exploratory analysis identifies integration-driven accelerators, evidence-driven pragmatists, and weakly-coupled drifters. The findings characterise retail sustainability as a dynamic conversion system with country-specific pathways to environmental and organisational outcomes; implications for individual customer responses require separate empirical testing.