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While supply chain scholars concur on the need to integrate supply chain finance (SCF) processes to meet ever-changing customer demands, it is unclear how SCF influences business performance in the presence of perceived opportunistic behavior. Therefore, the study aims to investigate the moderating role of perceived partner opportunism in the supply chain.

Drawing on the dynamic capability theory (DCT), this study investigates how perceived supply chain partner opportunism moderates the mediating role of supply- and demand-oriented performances on the link between SCF and business performance, from the retail industry perspective. Data was collected from Australian retailing firms. In all, 293 completed surveys were received. Moderated mediation analysis was conducted.

The results of this study indicate that supply- and demand-oriented performances serially mediate the relationship between SCF and business performance. The study also found that the effect of SCF on performance was higher when perceived partner opportunism was lower.

To respond to changes in consumer preferences and demand effectively, supply chain and marketing managers need to understand the complex interaction between supply- and demand-oriented performances and the key role of SCF in developing such capabilities.

The current study theorizes and demonstrates the effects of supply- and demand-oriented performances that can facilitate the effects of SCF on business performance. Also, the study reveals the effect of each dimension of SCF (accounts payable, accounts receivable and inventory finance) on supply- and demand-oriented performances. Additionally, the study shows the key role of perceived partner opportunism in supply chain management.

Though resource based view (RBV) has been applied extensively in supply chain studies to examine how firms utilize logistics resources to attain superior performance, relatively little attention has been directed to exploring the effects of operational routines on logistics and supply chain (L&SC) competencies. The purpose of this paper is to examine the causal linkages between operational routines and L&SC competencies of Chinese logistics service providers (LSPs).

A conceptual model on the relationships between operational routines and L&SC competencies was developed based on RBV. In total, 76 valid responses from a survey of Chinese LSPs provided the empirical data for the testing of the formulated hypotheses. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to develop the constructs for the model and hierarchical multiple regression analysis was performed to test the hypothesized relationships.

Not all operational routines were drivers of L&SC competencies in the Chinese logistics market. Processes for increasing responsiveness are most important in contributing to building positioning, distribution support and agility competencies. Processes for increasing flexibility are only effective in developing positioning competency, while performance benchmarking has little contribution to competency building in the Chinese market. ICT support strengthens the relationship between performance benchmarking and distribution support, but weakens that between processes for increasing flexibility and distribution support as well as that between processes for increasing responsiveness and agility.

This study raises more questions than it attempts to answer, opening up a number of horizons for further research into the logistics market of China. Several follow‐up studies have been suggested, including a multiple case study on how Chinese LSPs contrive their operational routines to respond to the exigencies of market situations.

Findings from this study have significant managerial implications in resource investment and competency building to generate competitive advantage in the Chinese logistics market.

This research sheds new insights on the routine‐capability‐competency building chain in China's fragmentary logistics industry. It indicates that despite over three decades of economic reform, and ascension to the World Trade Organization, China remains a distinctively unique market environment with ingredients for operation success vastly different from those of the developed economies.

Logistics and supply chain management has been elevated to a strategic level whereby firms can simultaneously achieve differentiation and low cost for sustained competitive advantage. Empirical studies have often concentrated on logistics management in developed Western countries, displaying a bias towards the USA. This study applies the competency approach to explore logistics in Taiwan. A survey of 1,200 manufacturing firms was undertaken in order to examine the relationships between logistics competency, logistics performance, and financial performance, using exploratory factor analysis and the structural equation modelling technique. Four logistics competencies, namely, integration and knowledge competency, customer focused logistics competency, measurement competency, and agility competency were identified. The research findings revealed that (1) logistics competency was significantly related to logistics performance but not significantly associated with financial performance, and (2) logistics performance was positively associated with financial performance. These findings also implied that logistics competency has an indirect effect on financial performance through logistics performance. This finding confirmed the “world-class” logistics competencies (i.e. positioning, integration, agility, and measurement) as identified by MSUGLRT (1995). In addition, it suggests that logistics competency in a huge geographic area such as America can have the same effect in a smaller geographic area such as Taiwan.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and prioritise supply chain finance (SCF) adoption enablers and develop a novel comprehensive framework to select supplier firms based on their SCF adoption capability.

The study deploys a three-phase method to identify and prioritise SCF adoption enablers, followed by developing a model to select suppliers according to their SCF adoption capability. An extensive literature review, followed by a Delphi approach-based expert interview, has been used to finalise the enablers. Using the Best Worst Method and the VIsekriterijumsko KOmpromisno Rangiranje technique, a supplier selection model has been developed in the context of a case company.

The financial health and technological advancement variables received the top priority, followed by collaborative efficiency, whereas the human resources and organisational variables received the slightest significance. A supplier selection framework has also been developed by using the adoption capability of these factors by the supplier partners. In this study’s model, Supplier 4 exhibited better SCF adoption capability and received the top priority.

Manufacturing supply chains in a developing country are the scope of the current study. Extensive future studies are required to derive a global consensus.

The proposed framework of this study can be used to select supplier firms based on their SCF adoption capability. Policymakers can emphasise the most critical enablers of SCF adoption to assist small supplier firms to be a part of the advanced global supply chains.

The current study established a novel comprehensive framework for supplier selection based on the Supply Chain Finance adoption capability of MSME supplier firms.

The purpose of this paper is to test the moderating effects of technological and demand uncertainties on the relationship between supply chain integration and customer delivery performance.

Based on a survey questionnaire with 151 participants in the Thai automotive industry supply chain, hierarchical regressions are used to test the moderating effects.

Internal and supplier integration, but not customer integration, were positively associated with customer delivery performance. Technological and demand uncertainties were found to moderate the relationships between internal integration and customer delivery performance, and supplier integration and customer delivery performance.

The moderating effects of technological and demand uncertainties in the Thai automotive just‐in‐time (JIT) environment are explained. This research contributes to the development of a contingency theory of supply chain integration suggesting that the impacts of supply chain integration on customer delivery performance vary under different levels of technological and demand uncertainties.

Managers recognize the diminishing effects of internal integration and supplier integration under demand uncertainty, and the increasing effect of supplier integration under high technological uncertainty.

This study contributes to the supply chain management literature by clarifying the moderating effects of technological and demand uncertainties on the relationship between supply chain integration and customer delivery performance.

Explores and describes the close interrelationship between marketing and logistics, i.e. the marketing activities and the logistics activities in a marketing channel. The author acknowledges that marketing and logistics were united in the beginning of the twentieth century, but that the two disciplines were in part separated from each other during the evolution of the last century. The topic is a business philosophy that may contribute to the re‐integration of the research disciplines. Usually, from a logistics perspective, the disciplines are treated as separate from each other, while from a marketing perspective the opposite is often acknowledged. In the 1980s, the potential re‐integration between the disciplines from a logistics perspective emerged through the business philosophy labeled as supply chain management (SCM). Both scholars and practitioners in the field of logistics have popularized this business philosophy in recent years. Argues that SCM contributes to the re‐integration of marketing issues in the field of logistics theory and practice.

This study empirically investigates how ambidextrous innovations and their balancing affect the supply chain financing performance (SCFP) of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), based on signaling theory. Moreover, this study explores the moderating effect of the breadth and depth of digital technology deployment on the relationship between ambidextrous innovations and the SCFP of SMEs.

A mixed-methods design is used, including a qualitative study and a quantitative study. Qualitative data have been collected from six multi-cases in different industries. Questionnaire data have been collected from 259 SMEs in China, and a multiple regression model is used to verify the research hypotheses.

The findings indicate that, in supply chain financing, both exploitative innovation and exploratory innovation are helpful in improving the SCFP of SMEs. For resource-constrained SMEs, a relative balance between exploitative innovation and exploratory innovation can help improve SCFP. The breadth of digital technology deployment can strengthen the relationship between exploitative innovation and SCFP, while the depth of digital technology deployment can weaken the relationship between exploratory innovation and SCFP. In addition, increasing the depth of digital technology deployment strengthens the positive correlation between the relative balance of ambidextrous innovations and SCFP.

To effectively obtain supply chain financing, SMEs can either concentrate their limited resources on a single type of innovation or use relative balance strategies to simultaneously pursue two innovations. In addition, in the process of obtaining supply chain financing by ambidextrous innovations, SMEs should appropriately deploy digital technologies.

This study first deconstructs the impact mechanism of ambidextrous innovation capabilities on SCFP based on signaling theory, and then discusses the balancing effect of ambidextrous innovations on SCFP in the cases of resource-constrained SMEs. This study also goes further and finds the negative moderating effect of digital technology deployment in the process of supply chain financing.

Financing remains a serious concern for firms and is considered the main hurdle in the growth and development of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Recently, a new stream of financing (SCF; supply chain finance) has emerged to meet the financing issues of SMEs. Therefore, measuring SCF is essential to support SMEs’ operations. This study aims to develop and validate the SCF scale based on extant literature.

Using a mixed-method approach, this study recruited different samples of SME entrepreneurs to confirm the internal consistency, assess construct validity and check the item structure of the SCF scale in AMOS.

The outcomes of confirmatory factor analysis demonstrated the six factors of SCF (inventory financing, working capital optimization, reverse financing, fixed assets financing, logistics financing and order cycle financing) spread over 21 items. An interitem solid structure of the SCF scale offers invaluable contributions to the supply chain management literature.

This research supports SME entrepreneurs to obtain secure financing at the best cost, mitigating the risk of default, supporting the buyers’ payment terms, providing early payment to suppliers and strengthening the firm’s value chains. SMEs can obtain financing per their requirements to support their operational business processes. Moreover, SMEs can plan, manage and control finance-related transactional activities by correctly identifying financing solutions.

The present study contributes to SCM literature by developing and validating the SCF scale. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study that redefined SCF and identified its six dimensions.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how path dependence in the evolution of major theories of foreign direct investment (FDI) locked in a theoretical perspective of the multinational enterprise that focused on asset-exploitation. This perspective is challenged by recent contradicting observations of multinationals from China and other emerging economies. A decisive re-orientation of FDI theory is proposed as a way forward to resolve this tension.

Placing FDI theories into the context of FDI patterns prevailing at the time they were developed, Thomas Kuhn’s framework on the evolution of scientific knowledge is employed to track how the mainstream FDI theory emerged, went through a period of normal science and then approached a crisis of science in this field.

The evolution of FDI theory is strongly path-dependent, which made it difficult for theory to effectively incorporate new conceptual discoveries and empirical findings about the nature of FDI activity.

FDI theory would benefit from a full re-orientation to a demand-oriented perspective which places the pursuit of advantages, assets, resources, etc., at the core of the theory. Such a change is implicit in many recent theoretical advances and would assure theory is generalizable to all types of FDI.

Information-sharing and flexibility are considered to be major tools for risk mitigation and supply chain resiliency. However, less light has been shed on the role of information-sharing as an enabler to utilize flexibility capabilities before and after supply chain disruptions. The aim of this paper is to provide indications on how digitalized information-sharing (DIS) enhances flexibility capability utilization.

The methodology follows a qualitative approach, including 31 transcribed semi-structured interviews with supply chain experts in Germany and Japan.

The findings indicate that DIS supports flexibility capability utilization in pre- and post-disruptive supply chain management. First, the enhancement of estimated transport time accuracy supports rapid supplier and transport mode adjustment. Second, while the effects of DIS in manufacturing are limited without pre-existing flexibility capabilities, steady internal and external DIS utilizes exciting manufacturing flexibility to cope with disruptions beyond production. Third, track and trace technologies enhance the value of shared data and allow flexibility in the form of demand-oriented distribution, but companies unable to adopt technologies can still enhance flexibility capabilities with DIS using the existing infrastructure.

This paper highlights the essential role of digital information-sharing for flexibility utilization in supply chain risk management. While existing studies engaged with flexibility and information-sharing in supply chain risk management, this study contributes by emphasizing digital information-sharing as a key triggering enabler for flexibility in pre- and post-disruptive phases.