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Scholars and practitioners increasingly recognize data as an important source of business opportunities, but research on the effect on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is limited. This paper empirically examines the complementary impact of SMEs' data capability and supply chain capability (SCC) and further tests the mediation effect of SCC between data capability and operational performance. The mediated effect of data capability is also moderated by competition.

This paper analyzes longitudinal data collected from 122 manufacturing SMEs in Finland. Hypotheses were tested by using structural equation modeling (SEM).

The results show that to benefit from the data capability, SMEs require a certain level of SCC to extract the value from the SMEs' data capability and support operational performance. Additionally, competition affects how SMEs benefit from data capability, as competitor turbulence moderates the complementary effect of data capability and SCC on operational performance.

This is one of the first studies examining the longitudinal effect of SMEs' data and SCC on operational performance in the current competitive environment.

This paper examines the moderating effect of environmental capability development on the relationship between supply chain integration and both environmental and financial performance.

The authors use empirical data collected from three diverse sources in the horticultural marketing sector. A total of 97 responses were used. An ordered logit analysis and ordinary least squares (OLS) regression were employed to test the hypotheses.

The results confirm that firm environmental capability development enhances the effects of supply chain integration on firm environmental performance. Additionally, supplier integration and environmental capabilities may be considered firm strategic capabilities that are positively related to financial performance. Thus, public policies should encourage the development of firms' individual environmental capabilities and supply chain integration to improve environmental sustainability.

This study recognizes the importance of environmental capability development as a strategic objective and its fundamental role as a complementary capability with supply chain integration. This paper contributes by empirically analyzing how firms along the supply chain can promote environmental sustainability through the development of environmental and integration capabilities.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between supply integration and firm performance by first, investigating the mediating effects of manufacturing flexibility and mass customization; and second, exploring the moderating role of innovation orientation on the link between internal capabilities and performance.

Resource orchestration and contingency theories are used to address the mediating and moderating effects. A cross-sectional data set on 242 Swedish manufacturers is used to test for the hypotheses using structural equation modeling.

The findings provide support for the mediating roles of manufacturing flexibility and mass customization in the relationship between supply integration and firm performance. However, the results point to contrasting contingent effects of innovation orientation. While innovation orientation positively moderates the association between mass customization and firm performance, it shows a negative impact on the link between flexibility and performance.

The study contributes to the literature on the integrative activities with upstream supply chain actors. Specifically, the authors highlight how specific capability configurations comprising of supply integration, manufacturing flexibility and mass customization lead to firm performance. Moreover, the authors provide insights on the contingency role of innovation, especially if firms consider flexibility or customization capabilities.

While the individual impacts of flexibility and customization on performance have been addressed previously, there is a paucity of research on how these two capabilities are integrated with supply integration. Moreover, there is little known regarding the role of innovation orientation on these integrated relationships.

This study views Net-Zero as a dynamic capability for decarbonising supply chains (SCs). This study aims to investigate the relationship between three information processing-related capabilities (supply chain visibility [SCV], supply chain integration [SCI] and big data analytics [BDA]) as its antecedents and SC performance as its competitive advantage outcome.

The authors conceptualise a research model grounded in the literature based on dynamic capabilities and information processing views. The study uses a structural equation modelling technique to test the hypotheses’ relationship using the survey data from 311 industrial enterprises.

The results show that SCI and BDA positively and directly influence the Net-Zero capability (NZC). No significant direct impact is found between SCV and NZC. BDA fully mediates SCV and partially mediates SCI in their relationship with NZC. The results also confirm that NZC positively impacts SC performance (SCP).

This study contributes to operations management and SC literature by extending the knowledge about Net-Zero SCs through an empirical investigation. In particular, the study suggests BDA is essential to enhance NZC as SCV alone does not significantly contribute. The study also documents the benefit of NZC on SCP, which can encourage more volunteer actions in the industry.

Smart industry initiatives focus on intelligent and interconnected cyber-physical systems. These initiatives develop complex technical architectures that integrate heterogenous technologies, causing significant organizational complexity. Tapping into the digital capabilities of distant partners while capturing profit from such innovation is demanding. Furthermore, firms often need to establish and orchestrate inter-organizational collaborations without prior relations or established trust. As a result, smart industry initiatives bring together disparate organizational forms and institutional environments, distinctive knowledge bases, and geographically dispersed organizations. We conceptualize this organizational capability as ‘distant capabilities integration’. This research explores the governance mechanisms that support such integration and their relation to value capture. We analyse 11 IoT case studies organized in three categories (process, product and technologies) of smart industry initiatives. Building on existing literature, we consider different ways to describe distance, including knowledge heterogeneity and organizational, geographical, institutional, cultural and cognitive distance. Finally, we describe the governance mode appropriate for upstream (developing foundational technologies) and downstream (leveraging existing distant technologies) smart industry initiatives.

Technology uncertainty poses significant challenges to manufacturers, as rapid changes in product and/or process standards and specifications can disrupt the smooth flow of materials in extended supply chains. Practitioners and researchers alike who take a relational perspective widely regard supplier involvement as a potentially effective strategy to cope with technology uncertainty, as focal manufacturers can tap into their upstream supply networks for complementary resources and capabilities. However, the literature lacks a nuanced understanding of the supplier involvement processes. Specifically, the role of resource dependence for supplier involvement has yet to be systematically understood. To fill this gap, this study aims to combine the relational perspective with the resource-dependence perspective to explore how buyer dependence, supplier dependence and buyer–supplier interdependence influence buyers’ decision-making on tapping into upstream supply networks for coping with technology uncertainty.

To test the hypotheses, a survey is conducted among Dutch firms with more than 50 employees in the discrete manufacturing industries (ISIC 28-35), resulting in a sample of 125 manufacturers.

First, there is a significantly positive relationship between technology uncertainty and supplier involvement, giving support to the expectation that buyers are indeed involving their key suppliers in the product/process design and improvement, as a response to technology uncertainty. Second, buyer dependence and interdependence are found to be positively moderating the relationship between technology uncertainty and supplier involvement. In contrast, supplier dependence has a negative moderating effect on the baseline relationship.

The authors contribute to a relational view on buyer–supplier relationships by showing that the validity of this view, in the context of technology uncertainty, is contingent on the resource dependence between buyers and suppliers, and the authors contribute to the supply chain management literature more generally by combining a relational perspective with a resource-dependence perspective.

The findings provide several nuanced insights into the effect of resource dependence (buyer dependence, supplier dependence and interdependence) on supplier involvement for coping with technology uncertainty.

This study contributes to the supply chain management research by going beyond the benefits of supplier involvement and highlights the circumstances under which supplier involvement is likely to occur.

The purpose of this paper is to identify integrated solutions business as the first generation of servitized offerings and modular solution offerings as the second development phase in servitization of original equipment manufacturers. This study examines how the servitized manufacturer, Kone, moves from integrated solutions to modular solutions business and develops the requisite capabilities to design, produce and implement modular solution offerings.

The paper reports a longitudinal case study of a provider of integrated solutions installed in buildings. During the ten years studied, the manufacturer implemented a strategic initiative to modularize its integrated solutions offering.

The firm’s transition to modular solutions progressed through three major capability development phases: solutions based on ad hoc integration, smart solutions based on modular design and through-chain modularity. The modular structure aims at fostering the efficiency of the solution offering and the associated production system.

Leveraging the benefits of modularity calls for an aligned combination of strategic, operational and technical capabilities contributing to the integration of resources in a modular production system for the solution providers’ competitive performance.

The study reports how a solution provider can develop the operational capabilities to integrate the core and peripheral components into the solution, and orchestrate the modular production system.

This study is a rare longitudinal analysis of how a manufacturer builds a modular offering, the solution platform and the required competitive capabilities to provide the solution.

Digital transformation is a foundational change in how firms operate and deliver value to customers by using digital technologies to create new business opportunities. The purpose of this study is to offer a conceptual framework by reorganizing the elements of digital transformation, including resources, technology, capabilities and performance, into a workable process and investigating how firms integrate these resources, build new capabilities and transform them into enhanced performance.

This framework builds three blocks: resource integration, organizational capabilities and outcomes, exploring the impact of resource integration on outcomes through organizational capabilities. For resource integration, this study adopts a resource-based view (RBV) and service-dominant logic (SDL) to integrate organizational resources, including information technology (IT)-based resources, which play a role in moderating the effect of resource integration. Moreover, the author argues that firms’ capabilities have two levels: higher-order capabilities and lower-order capabilities, which will convert these resources through the capabilities into organizational performance.

This framework is built to understand the process of digital transformation and its antecedents for firms’ performance in business environments. Drawing on RBV, it provides a more holistic perspective that has been linked to resource integration, organizational capabilities and outcomes at the firm level. In this way, the theoretical basis for diminishing implicitness associated with the current perspective of digital transformation can be strengthened.

This paper offers a coherent discussion of digital transformation and explains the process of digital transformation, thus advancing prior work. The major contribution is connecting the process of digital transformation through which firms integrate resources, i.e. digital technologies and valuable, rare, inimitable and nonsubstitutable (VRIN) and nonVRIN resources as well, to build organizational dynamic capabilities based on RBV and SDL.

Suppliers are essential partners in innovation projects, as they own resources, knowledge assets and capabilities that complement those of buying firms. In today’s competitive environment, firms may choose to collaborate with suppliers beyond dyads, forming triadic or three-party relationships. Using the theoretical lens of the relational view (RV), this study aims to explore what type of triad configurations firms use to govern supplier relationships in collaborative innovation projects, how they choose to share resources and implications for project performance.

The authors use interview data from buyers and suppliers in six case studies of firms involved in ten collaborative innovation projects. The four constructs of the RV are used to observe how firms govern triadic relationships, combine complementary resources, invest in relationship-specific assets and manage information and knowledge exchange with and between suppliers in innovation projects.

Four archetypes of triadic relationships in innovation projects – labeled Triangle, A-frame, D-Frame and Line – are presented and characterized in terms of their structural and relational features. The authors discuss how each triad archetype is applicable to different innovation projects according to specific project characteristics.

This study is pioneering in its empirical examination of triadic relationships in collaborative innovation projects. It provides a novel typology of four archetypes of triad from the perspective of collaborative relationships with suppliers. Through applying the RV, it advances understanding of how triadic relationships are governed, how they invest in relationship-specific assets, how they combine complementary resources and how they exchange knowledge and information in each type of triad appropriate to different innovation project settings. To date, much of the extant literature has focused on dyads.