The Moderating role of digital technologies in the relationship between Resilience and Social Sustainability in the Fashion Supply Chain

There has been a growing interest in exploring the relationship between resilience and sustainability, with digital technologies playing a pivotal role in strengthening this connection. This paper investigates how digital tools moderate the relationship between resilience and sustainability. It focuses on agility and collaboration constructs of resilience, and five digital technologies (e.g., blockchain, IoT, big data predictive analytics, artificial intelligence, and cloud-based platforms) are commonly cited in the supply chain literature. This cross-sectional study collects data from 190 actors in the fashion supply chain (FSC) of Bangladesh through a closed-ended questionnaire. PLS-SEM was conducted using SmartPLS4 to test the proposed hypotheses. The findings reveal that agility, collaboration, and digital tools were found to moderate the relationship with social sustainability, reinforcing the higher moderating effect for collaboration and sustainability. This study provides empirical evidence for the role of digital tools in enhancing social sustainability, offering valuable insights for both academia and practitioners.