Digital Transformation and Disclosed Supply-Chain Quality Capability in Chinese Manufacturing: An Audited Annual-Report Study

Abstract

This study examines whether digital transformation is associated with supply-chain quality capability (SCQC) as disclosed in annual reports of Chinese listed manufacturers. The study develops SCQC_v2, a context-filtered annual-report measure that retains references to implemented supplier-quality, certification, inspection, traceability, and process-control routines while excluding financial notes, generic slogans, future plans, and unrelated quality language. Using a 2010-2024 A-share manufacturing panel, firm fixed-effects models show a positive same-year association between digital-transformation disclosure and disclosed SCQC. In the preferred specification, which controls for annual-report length and removes the sparsely observed patent control, the association remains positive but modest. It is not stable after firm-specific trends or lagged digitalization are introduced, and accounting-based digital-intangible-asset measures do not reproduce the result. The contribution is therefore both methodological and substantive: annual-report dictionaries should be treated as audited measurement instruments, and the evidence supports a contemporaneous disclosure relationship rather than a causal investment-to-capability claim. The findings direct attention to supplier and process-quality routines as an operational setting in which digital transformation becomes visible