The Impact of Sustainable Supply Chain Management on Financial and Operational Performance: The Mediating Role of Digital Supply Chain Integration (Case Study: Hezardastan Holding)

Introduction
Organizations are increasingly compelled to adopt sustainable supply chain management practices to create, maintain, and strengthen their competitive positions. In this context, digital supply chain integration plays a critical mediating role by enabling greater coordination, transparency, and flexibility across supply chain activities. Through digitalization, firms in developing countries can overcome traditional barriers such as inefficient logistics infrastructure, limited access to real-time data, and ineffective supply chain operations. This approach enhances collaboration among supply chain actors and improves overall business performance by simplifying processes, reducing costs, and creating new opportunities for innovation. Moreover, digital integration facilitates sustainability initiatives such as resource recovery and product life-cycle extension. Accordingly, this study seeks to examine whether sustainable supply chain practices, mediated by digital supply chain integration, influence the performance of organizations such as Hezardastan Holding. Based on a comprehensive review of the literature, five hypotheses are proposed: (1) sustainable supply chains positively affect financial performance; (2) sustainable supply chains positively affect operational performance; (3) digital supply chain integration positively affects financial performance; (4) digital supply chain integration positively affects operational performance; and (5) sustainable supply chains, through the mediating role of digital supply chain integration, positively affect overall business performance.
 
Methodology
This study is classified as applied research, as it aims to develop practical knowledge to address real-world organizational challenges. In terms of methodology, it adopts a descriptive–survey design, given its reliance on questionnaire-based data collection to examine the relationships among the research variables. The primary data collection instrument was a structured questionnaire adapted from Fu et al. (2022) and Li (2021). The questionnaire based on Fu et al. (2022) measures business performance, including operational performance (5 items) and financial performance (7 items). The instrument adapted from Li (2021) assesses sustainable supply chain management across environmental (5 items) and social (5 items) dimensions, as well as digital supply chain integration (5 items).
The statistical population consists of employees of Hezardastan Holding, which employs approximately 1,200 staff members. With its three major data centers in Iran and an extensive geographical and network presence across Europe, North America, and East Asia, Hezardastan Holding leverages advanced global technologies to deliver infrastructure solutions previously provided to major Iranian companies such as Bazaar, Divar, and Balad (Hezardastan, 2024).
 
Findings
The results indicate that all study variables have mean values between 3 and 4 and variances below 1, suggesting relatively low dispersion around the mean. These mean values imply that sustainable supply chain practices, business performance, and digital supply chain integration at Hezardastan Holding are above average. In addition, skewness and kurtosis values for all variables fall between −1 and 1, indicating approximate normality of the data distribution. Accordingly, AMOS software was employed for inferential statistical analysis. Among the dimensions of sustainable supply chain management, the environmental dimension exhibited a higher mean than the social dimension. Similarly, within business performance, financial performance showed a higher mean than operational performance. All factor loadings exceeded 0.30, and the estimated regression coefficients between variables were statistically significant. These results support and confirm all proposed hypotheses.
 
Discussion and Conclusion
The findings of the study conducted at Hezardastan Holding demonstrate that sustainable supply chain management has a positive and significant effect on financial performance, thereby supporting the first hypothesis. Likewise, its impact on operational performance is positive and significant, confirming the second hypothesis. Effective management of inventory, information, and capital flows, combined with inter-organizational collaboration aimed at sustainability, contributes to the achievement of supply chain partners’ objectives by integrating economic, environmental, and social considerations into business processes. Furthermore, digital supply chain integration was found to have a positive and significant impact on both financial and operational performance, leading to the acceptance of the third and fourth hypotheses. Digital integration enables the coordination of product and information flows across geographically dispersed supply chain partners, thereby reducing inefficiencies and mitigating challenges associated with distance. Finally, the results confirm that sustainable supply chain management exerts a positive and significant effect on overall business performance through the mediating role of digital supply chain integration, supporting the fifth hypothesis. The impact of sustainable supply chains on business performance is therefore twofold: directly, through improvements in financial and operational performance, and indirectly, by enhancing digital supply chain integration, which further strengthens organizational performance.