Volume 1 - Issue 4, November - December 2025

Nigerian manufacturing firms operate in a challenging environment characterised by high operating costs, infrastructure constraints, and increasing stakeholder expectations for both sustainability and technology-enabled efficiency. Despite growing interest in sustainable business practices and digital transformation, many firms implement these initiatives as parallel projects rather than integrated strategic capabilities that can generate defensible competitive advantage and improved organisational performance. This study investigates how sustainable business practices, digital transformation capability, and strategic management capability jointly influence competitive advantage and organisational performance in Nigerian manufacturing firms, and whether competitive advantage mediates these relationships while strategic management capability strengthens them. Using a quantitative, explanatory cross-sectional design, data were collected from managers across multiple manufacturing subsectors and analysed using structural equation modelling. The results show that sustainable business practices and digital transformation capability both have positive and significant effects on competitive advantage and organisational performance, with digital transformation showing a comparatively stronger effect on competitive advantage. Competitive advantage demonstrates a strong positive relationship with organisational performance and partially mediates the effects of sustainability and digital transformation on performance, indicating that these capabilities create value most effectively when they translate into market-facing advantages. Strategic management capability positively influences competitive advantage and significantly moderates the relationships between sustainability and competitive advantage as well as digital transformation and competitive advantage, confirming that strategic alignment and execution discipline amplify the competitive returns of sustainability and digital investments. The study concludes that Nigerian manufacturers achieve superior performance when sustainability and digital transformation are strategically integrated and managed as complementary capability bundles, rather than pursued as isolated compliance or technology initiatives. The findings provide a practical roadmap for managers seeking to improve competitiveness through integrated sustainability digital strategies and contribute to capability-based explanations of performance in emerging-economy manufacturing contexts.