Digital Platforms for Green Transition: A Global Value Chains perspective

As environmental challenges intensify globally, there is surging policy and academic debates underscore the potential of digital transition as a catalyst for the green transition. Under the significant and urgent discourse of the ‘twin transition’, this dissertation specifically focuses on the role of digital platforms. Given their unique logic of value creation and growth, their role in fostering green transition is studied beyond traditional firm boundaries and supply chains. Situating them with global context, a Global Value Chains (GVC thereafter) perspective is adopted to establish a holistic view and capture their greening impact on ecosystem actors at meso level. Based on insights from the three main literatures (platform, GVC, and sustainability), a limited integration between the platform and GVC literatures is found to obscure important synergies and risk overlooking significant aspects. Therefore, through a systematic literature review, paper one first integrates the two literatures and provides a comprehensive map of ‘points of contact’ between features of digital platforms and concepts under the GVC framework. From the study of paper one, consumer-oriented transaction platforms are found to act as ‘new type of lead firms’, extending a ‘driving’ logic of governance. Paper two then explores their role from the understudied environmental perspective. Framing as digital multinationals (MNEs), two leading platform firms (Amazon and Alibaba) are examined in term of how they promote sustainability as (1) traditional lead firm on upstream suppliers and downstream buyers; and (2) digital platform on supply-side and demand-side. Paper two thus provides insights on the role of digital platforms in driving sustainability as lead firms. In the emerging field of circular economy, digital platforms are found to play central roles but have not yet become lead firms. Paper three then turns to explore their role in fostering circular transition as an important subset under the general green transition agenda. It conceptualizes platform-based circular business models (PCBMs) and ‘circular value chains’, then conducts a multi-cases qualitative study on resale and rental platforms in fashion industry to explore the role of PCBMs within circular value chains, their geographical configuration, and coordination with key actors. Based on findings of the three studies, this dissertation makes several important theoretical contributions and managerial implications. Several limitations and suggestions for future research are presented at the end.