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The purpose of this paper is to explore earlier stages of complex products and systems (CoPS) innovations, investigating how technology development can be coordinated.

This paper uses a case study methodology, adopting an abductive logic, characterized by a nonlinear and iterative process of systematic confrontations between theoretical framework, empirical fieldwork and case analysis. Specifically, the authors study the Swedish aerospace network, which distinctly represents the CoPS characteristics of intense technology development with long-term goals and project-based activities with universities, research institutes, small medium enterprises and leading firms.

By adding the network perspective in the CoPS literature, the authors found that technology development can be coordinated within the technological and the business dimensions and according to different strategic nets. Also, the authors found that strategic nets co-evolve when their related projects are connected and advance in maturity, and their actors change their network position.

Current research on CoPS often recognizes that the survival and growth of a firm depend on its ability to coordinate innovative projects that are usually implemented during technology development. The findings contribute to this literature by showing how such projects can be implemented through agenda construction and the simultaneous coordination of strategic nets, leading to the synchronization of resources and activities. As such, this study’s framework offers a novel and integrative view of how the short-run and long-run strategies of leading firms can be aligned, and how other actors can contribute to the direction of the innovation path.

The purpose of the paper is to provide a conceptual/theoretical foundation to enhance the body of knowledge related to supply chain interdependence and technology‐enabled coordination.

The paper heavily engaged itself in the theory/literature related to coordination theory, interdependence theory, interdependence, coordination and supply chain technologies to formulate the theoretical propositions.

From the literature/theoretical bases, the paper derived a total (include sub‐components) of eight theoretical propositions related to interdependence, coordination and technology enablers.

While technology enabled‐coordination is central to supply chain management, there is a lack of a prescriptive view present in the literature. By deriving insights from the rich literature related to coordination theory and interdependence theory, we provide a theoretical foundation for future research to enhance the body of knowledge related to the systematic application of technology to foster the appropriate coordination strategy.

Although empirical support is warranted, the proposed concepts related to technology‐enabled coordination offer pragmatic advice to managers.

The paper provides a theoretical foundation for future research to enhance the body of knowledge related to the systematic application of technology to foster the appropriate coordination strategies.

The main objective of this paper is to investigate information system (IS) supported coordination in knowledge‐intensive business processes. These are business processes that cannot be pre‐defined as their models evolve during process execution from the accumulated experience. Consequently, these processes require a high level of knowledge‐sharing, collection and reuse among all participants in the process.

The paper offers a critical analysis of the main limitations of workflow technology that is widely considered to be the leading process‐oriented, coordination technology. It illustrates why this technology cannot be used to support coordination in knowledge‐intensive business processes. The paper then identifies a number of requirements for possible IS support.

The main conclusion of this paper is that coordination in knowledge‐intensive processes is, in fact, a knowledge‐intensive process itself, and as such it cannot be fully pre‐defined. Therefore, automation of this process is neither desirable nor possible.

Each IS requirement, proposed in this paper, identifies a number of further research and implementation challenges related to support of knowledge‐intensive business process. They will be of interest to researchers and practitioners both in the fields of business process management as well as knowledge management.

In essence, this paper argues that knowledge‐intensive business processes require fundamentally different coordination support from what is currently available in the area of business process support. This paper shifts the main emphasis from process automation to IS support for situated decision‐making.

The impacts of information technology on business relationships have been of interest to managers for decades, and this stream of research has also steadily gained recognition among academics. However, the emergence of mobile technologies and the use of mobile solutions within business relationships is a less well studied area. Thus, the purpose of this research is to show how mobile solutions can be deployed within industrial buyer‐supplier relationships to enhance processes, coordination and overall value creation.

The empirical part of the research presents an in‐depth case study in the context of the steel industry.

It is shown that mobile technology usage has a central role in key business relationships to improve internal and inter‐organizational coordination. Mobile technology usage grid was conceptualized from the literature to categorize the possible impacts of mobile technology deployment on coordination.

As a practical result, this research shows that a wi‐fi infrastructure based system that uses handheld devices like PDAs can be used to shorten and cut costs of internal and interfacing processes between buyer and supplier. In practice, the steel hardness test report measurements and transmissions from one organization to another are made more effective.

The limitation of the research is the use of only one case study and the resulting lack of generalizable results. Future studies could include case studies in other contexts, and later a quantitative study could be conducted to validate and broaden the findings.

The paper presents how mobile technology is used in a business relationship and what kind of impacts the usage has on the relationship. The paper contributes to the evolving bonding discussion in business relationships as well as indicates ways to use mobile technology effectively in a business relationship.

Digital technology is crucial to improving a firm’s core competitiveness. However, the existing research on the relationship therein shows heterogeneity. Using digital technology can enhance competitive advantage, which is crucial for enterprises and scholars. Thus, based on the digital technology affordance theory, this study explores the relationship between digital technology affordance and digital competitive advantage.

Survey data were collected from 509 large and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises in China, and multiple regression and structural equation modelling were used to test the hypotheses. Specifically, we discuss the mediating role of digital business capability and the moderating role of organisational legitimacy.

Editability, association and visibility positively affect digital competitive advantage, and their coordination is strong. Further, they can help enterprises gain a competitive advantage through the mediating role of digital business capability (digital strategy, digital integration and regulation). However, the influence effect and action path differ per in different dimensions. Organisational legitimacy positively moderates the mediating effect of digital integration and regulation, and there is a moderated mediating effect. However, the moderating effect on the mediating effect of digital strategy is not significant.

Existing studies neglect the relationship between the coordination of digital technology functions and digital competitive advantage. This study provides a new theoretical explanation for an in-depth understanding of these issues. These findings promote the development of innovation theory and provide valuable insights for guiding the application of digital technology in enterprises.

Supply chain coordination is concerned with managing dependencies between various supply chain members and the joint efforts of all supply chain members to achieve mutually defined goals. There are different coordination mechanisms reported in the literature that have been discussed in isolation like information sharing, information technology, long‐term partnerships, and joint decision making which help in coordinating supply chain members. Various coordination models have been proposed considering isolated activities of the supply chain. There is a need to consider a holistic perspective of coordination in the entire supply chain. This paper sets out to analyze a case study of XYZ, a leading automotive parts manufacturer in India, to throw light on the status of coordination in its supply chain.

A situation‐actor‐process (SAP)‐learning‐action‐performance (LAP) model has been applied to analyze the case study of XYZ. The situation represents the present scenario of the organization. Actors are the participants, influencing the situation to evolve different business processes. Based on SAP, various learning issues have been analyzed which lead to suitable action followed by impact of SAP on the performance of the supply chain of the organization.

Various issues that need attention are: the type of relationship with suppliers and buyers, coordination effort with supply chain members, various mechanisms like information sharing, information technology, information systems, joint decision making, and flexibility required to adopt the above‐mentioned issues of coordination.

The flexible model of SAP‐LAP is used to explain soft and hard issues of supply chain coordination in a managerial context with reference to a dynamic SAP‐LAP model as applied to the case of XYZ.

The flexible model of SAP‐LAP presents the situation of coordination to participants who may initiate the processes needed to be coordinated. It also helps in identifying flexibility gaps in adoption of coordination mechanisms. The synthesis of SAP leads to LAP, which bridges the gap of flexibility by suggesting improvement actions on the gaps of flexibility or the learning from the present situation, actors and processes.

This is a novel approach to analyze quantitative and qualitative issues of supply chain coordination in a single model comprising various perspectives on coordination, coordination mechanisms, and flexibility required to coordinate, and the impact of coordination on performance of the supply chain.

Ongoing advancements in technology provide the opportunity to build and to improve successful virtual teams. Organizational leaders are facing a dynamic and competitive environment that requires levels of flexibility and fast responses to the global marketplace. The virtual team structure is built on communication that is impacted by the ability of the team members to engage with integrated collaborative technology. Advances in technology enable team members of virtual teams to communicate crucial information and to be perceived as inclusive. Communication technologies have characteristics and capabilities that allow for different levels of communication richness, which refers to the quantity and quality of the shared information provided by the technology. There are two broad categories of collaboration technology: communication-focused technology and coordination-focused technology. Communication-focused technologies are considered key contributors to building trust in virtual teams. Coordination-focused technology refers to a complementary set of tools that can be leveraged to enhance trust and coordination among team members. Advances in technology that are discussed: real-time communications protocols enhances video calls through any type of device including wearable technology; Internet of Things making it easier and more natural for people to interact with the objects to stay connected; higher video resolution continues to improve in terms of price, quality, and performance, which will increase the number and type of devices for communication.

The coordination among the various entities such as the military, government agencies, civilians, non-governmental agencies, and other commercial enterprises is one of the most challenging aspects of managing the humanitarian supply chain. Blockchain technology (BCT) can facilitate coordination, but the cost and other hindrances have limited their application in disaster relief operations. Despite some studies, the existing literature does not provide a nuanced understanding of the application of blockchain technology to improve information alignment and coordination. Motivated by some recent examples where blockchain technology has been used to trace and mobilize resources in the form of funds and materials from the origin to the destination, the authors develop a theoretical model grounded in the contingent resource-based view.

To empirically validate the model and test the research hypotheses, the authors gathered cross-sectional data using a structured pre-tested questionnaire. In this study, the authors gathered our responses from international non-governmental organizations from twenty-four countries. The authors performed the statistical analyses using variance-based structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) with the help of commercial software (WarpPLS 7.0).

The findings of the study offer some useful implications for theory and practice. The results obtained through statistical analyses suggest that the BCT significantly affects information alignment and coordination. However, contrary to popular beliefs the study suggests that intergroup leadership has no significant moderating effect on the paths joining BCT and information alignment/coordination. Moreover, the authors found that the control variable (interdependence) significantly affects the information alignment and coordination further, which opens the room for further investigation.

The result of the study offers some useful guidance. Firstly, it suggests that humanitarian organizations should invest in BCT to improve information alignment and coordination which is one of the most complex tasks in front of humanitarian organizations. Secondly, intergroup leadership may not have desired influence on the effects of BCT on information alignment/coordination. However, the interdependence of the humanitarian organizations on each other may have a significant influence on the information alignment/coordination.

The study offers some useful implications for theory. For instance, how BCT influences information alignment and coordination was not well understood in the context of humanitarian settings. Hence, this study offers a nuanced understanding of technology-enabled coordination in humanitarian settings.

This study aims to analyse how the adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies can help different types of agri-food supply chains introduce and manage innovations in response to the challenges and opportunities that emerged following the COVID-19 pandemic.

A systematic literature review methodology was used to bring together the most relevant contributions from different disciplines and provide comprehensive results on the use of I4.0 technologies in the agri-food industry.

Four technological clusters are identified, which group together the I4.0 technologies based on the applications in the agri-food industry, the objectives and the advantages provided. In addition, three types of agri-food supply chains have been identified and their configuration and dynamics have been studied. Finally, the I4.0 technologies most suited for each type of supply chain have been identified, and suggestions on how to effectively introduce and manage innovations at different levels of the supply chain are provided.

The study highlights how the effective adoption of I4.0 technologies in the agri-food industry depends on the characteristics of the supply chains. Technologies can be used for different purposes and managers should carefully consider the objectives to be achieved and the synergies between technologies and supply chain dynamics.

The development of communication and artificial intelligence technologies has raised interest in connectivity and increased autonomy of automated earthmoving equipment for earthwork. These changes are motivating work to reduce uncertainties, in terms of improving equipment object detection capability and reducing strikes and accidents on site. The purpose of this study is to illustrate industrial drivers for automated earthwork systems; identify the specific capabilities which make the transformation happen; and finally determine use cases that create value for the system. These three objectives act as components of a technology roadmap for automated and connected earthwork and can guide development of new products and services.

This paper used a text mining approach in which the required data was captured through a structured literature review, and then expert knowledge was used for verification of the results.

Automated and connected earthwork can enhance construction site and its embraced infrastructure, resilience by avoiding human faults during operations. Automating the monitoring process can lead to reliable anticipation of problems and facilitate real-time responses to unexpected situation via connectedness capabilities. Research findings are presented in three sections: industrial perspectives, trends and drivers for automated and connected earthwork; capabilities which are met by technologies; and use cases to demonstrate different capabilities.

This study combines the results of disintegrated and fragmented research in the area of automated and connected earthwork and categorises them under new capability levels. The identified capabilities are classified in three main categories including reliable environmental perception, single equipment decision-making toward safe outcomes and fleet-level safety enhancement. Finally, four different levels of automation are proposed for earthwork technology roadmap.