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Digital transformation using Industry 4.0 technologies can address various challenges in food supply chains (FSCs). However, the integration of emerging technologies to achieve digital transformation in FSCs is unclear. This study aims to establish how the digital transformation of FSCs can be achieved by adopting key technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoTs), cloud computing (CC) and big data analytics (BDA).

A systematic literature review (SLR) resulted in 57 articles from 2008 to 2022. Following descriptive and thematic analysis, a conceptual framework based on the diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory and the context-intervention-mechanism-outcome (CIMO) logic is established, along with avenues for future research.

The combination of DOI theory and CIMO logic provides the theoretical foundation for linking the general innovation process to the digital transformation process. A novel conceptual framework for achieving digital transformation in FSCs is developed from the initiation to implementation phases. Objectives and principles for digitally transforming FSCs are identified for the initiation phase. A four-layer technology implementation architecture is developed for the implementation phase, facilitating multiple applications for FSC digital transformation.

The study contributes to the development of theory on digital transformation in FSCs and offers managerial guidelines for accelerating the growth of the food industry using key Industry 4.0 emerging technologies. The proposed framework brings clarity into the “neglected” intermediate stage of data management between data collection and analysis. The study highlights the need for a balanced integration of IoT, CC and BDA as key Industry 4.0 technologies to achieve digital transformation successfully.

This paper aims to draw on the Dynamic Capabilities View to discuss how small and medium enterprises (SMEs) use digital technologies to develop digital capabilities that will enable them to change their current business model and trajectory, that is, to pivot-within turbulent environments, and subsequently to survive and grow.

The authors collected and analysed qualitative data from 26 SMEs in South-East England that have used digital technologies to pivot during the pandemic. The data was collected via in-depth semi-structured interviews. The authors analysed the data by creating first-order concepts, second-order themes, and aggregating dimensions.

The findings suggest that (1) digital technologies enable pivoting by facilitating the creation of the following digital capability types: “digital sensing”, “digital seizing” and “digital transforming”; (2) Each of these digital capability types is underpinned by micro-foundations (sub-capabilities) and shaped by the digital culture of the organisation. (3) these capabilities are triggered by the turbulent environment and the existing digital technologies, and are shaped by the digital culture.

The authors contribute to the literature of digital entrepreneurship as the authors illustrate (1) how the micro-foundations of digital capabilities, as facilitated by digital technologies, assist pivoting; and (2) the process from key activities during pivoting to second-order themes that represent micro-foundations to digital (dynamic) capabilities for pivoting in turbulent environments. The study highlights the importance of digital pivoting for businesses in the UK Southeast that have many aspirations for growth and innovation, whilst striving to address multiple challenges including digital divide and literacy, inflation and cost of living crisis, as well as supply chain issues.

Technology-enabled business-to-business (B2B) services contribute the largest share to GDP growth and are fundamental for an economy’s value creation. This article aims to identify key service- and digital technology-driven B2B innovation modes and proposes a research agenda for further exploration.

This conceptual paper adopts a techno-demarcation view on service innovation, encompassing three core dimensions: service offering (the service product, or the “what”), service process (the “how”) and service ecosystem (the “who/for whom”). It delineates the implications of three digital technologies – the internet-of-things (IoT), intelligent automation (IA) and digital platforms – for service innovation across these core dimensions in B2B markets.

Digital technology has immense potential ramifications for value creation by reshaping all three core dimensions of service innovation. Specifically, IoT can transform physical resources into reconfigurable service products, IA can augment and automate a rapidly expanding array of service processes, while digital platforms provide the technical and organizational infrastructure for the integration of resources and stakeholders within service ecosystems.

This study suggests an agenda with six themes for further research, each linked to one or more of the three service innovation dimensions. They are (1) new recurring revenue models, (2) service innovation in the metaverse, (3) scaling up service innovations, (4) ecosystem innovations, (5) power dependency and lock-in effects and (6) security and responsibility in digital domains.

In the digital age, emerging technologies have affected every industry. Information and communications technology and digital technologies have transformed traditional supply chains into smart and more resilient ones, enabling effective management of challenges. Given the importance of the two topics, namely sustainable supply chain management and Industry 4.0 in supply chain management, on the one hand, and the dearth of theoretical research performed in this area on the other, this study aims to propose a conceptual model on a sustainable digital supply chain management in manufacturing companies.

This study utilized a qualitative approach. First, an in-depth review of the relevant literature was done. Then, following a multi-grounded theory methodology, relevant data were gathered by reviewing 92 papers and conducting nine semi-structured interviews with industry experts. These data were analyzed using the MAXQDA software.

A total of 41 concepts, ten sub-components and three main components (dimensions) were extracted, and the proposed conceptual model was presented. Finally, based on this conceptual model, three propositions were suggested.

Considering that the present study was performed in the context of Iranian manufacturing companies, caution should be exercised in relation to the generalizability of the obtained results. Also, due to the problems in the digital technology infrastructure and the limited use of these technologies by manufacturing companies (emphasized by the interviewees), this study focused on the theoretical dimension of using digital technologies by these companies.

The proposed comprehensive model can help academicians as well as practitioners to focus better and explore the variables and constructs of the model, paving the way toward successful implementation of digital technologies in the manufacturing supply chain.

To the best knowledge of the authors, this study is among the first of its kind which presents a holistic and comprehensive digital supply chain model aimed at guiding companies to consider sustainability from all the main dimensions and their relevant indicators.

In this study, the researchers explored the roles played by digital technologies and digital innovation (DI) in Pakistan's Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) companies' firm performance (FP).

The researchers used a quantitative study to gather cross-sectional data from employees working in Pakistan's ICT companies. The authors based this study's findings on 396 valid samples.

The structural equation modeling (SEM) findings underline that digital capability (DC), digital orientation (DO) and digital transformation (DT) have positive and significant effects on DI and FP. Moreover, there is a positive and significant relationship between DI and FP. Finally, DI mediates DC's, DO's and DT's associations with FP.

By committing to embracing new digital technologies and updating existing DCs to become innovation leaders and to improve FP, the findings will help sectors to take advantage of developing digital technologies and the trend toward digitalization. The results are also valuable for policymakers when considering if SMEs should be provided with more money for the digital up-skilling of their employees. Finally, this study's findings enrich the depth of literature about companies' use of digital technologies.

This study's empirical findings confirm the roles played by DC, DO and DT in improving DI and FP in a developing country such as Pakistan.

This study aims to assess the extent to which Uganda university libraries have implemented digital transformation technologies and to determine the facilitators and barriers affecting the implementation of digital transformation in selected university libraries in Uganda.

This study used a convergent parallel mixed methods design. It was conducted in six selected university libraries in Uganda, which were in three private and three public universities. The study sample included 103 librarians with a minimum qualification of a bachelor’s degree and six library directors.

The findings indicated that there was an average (n = 37, 48.7%) implementation of digital transformation in the selected university libraries in Uganda. Some of the barriers hindering digital transformation included inadequate funding, lack of awareness of digital technologies, inadequate ICT skills, insufficient ICT infrastructure and limited staff among others. There is a need for library management to provide support in the form of funds, policies and human resources to implement such digital transformation.

The criteria for choosing universities were those that have been around for at least 10 years. The reason for this was that it was assumed that these universities would have well-established staff development programmes and procedures as well as be likely to have incorporated technology into their services, including libraries. This study’s limitations stem from the fact that this criterion for selection might not apply to all Ugandan university libraries, particularly those that are less than 10 years old and may not have been well represented in this study.

The magnitude of the problem of digital transformation in university libraries in Uganda is unclear because of the limited research available in the Uganda library and information science field. This study presents the status of digital transformation in Uganda university libraries.

The purpose of this paper is to inspire a different way of thinking about digitalization and organizational change by theorizing simultaneity as an alternative to the otherwise dominant root metaphor of sequence in the literature on digitalization and organizational change.

The theoretical argument is based on a reading of central contributions to the literature on digital technology and organizational change, and particularly inspired by the work positing a constitutive entanglement of technology and organization. We argue for an extension of this line of thinking with a reading of Latour’s notion tonalities. The relevance of the theoretical argument is demonstrated through an illustrative empirical example of the phenomenon digital-ready legislation.

The paper identifies sequence as a root metaphor in the organization and digital change literature. It develops a simultaneity view and illustrates its relevance through the example of digital-ready legislation, pinpointing how technological, organizational and legal elements are attuned to one another at the same time rather than in sequence.

The sequentiality view has dominated the change management research, which has travelled from research into practice. The simultaneity view has the potential to offer a new approach to planning change, with a focus on the simultaneous alignment of, e.g. legal, organizational and technological elements.

The paper offers an alternative to dominant views on digitalization and organizational change, drawing on an overlooked notion in Latour’s scholarship, namely tonalities. This has potential to qualify the entanglement thesis and develop simultaneity as a new metaphor for understanding digital change.

This paper addresses the growing fragmentation between traditional and digital service innovation (DSI) research and offers a unifying metatheoretical framework.

Grounded in service-dominant (S-D) logic's service ecosystems perspective, this study builds on an institutional and systemic, rather than product-centric and linear, conceptualization of value creation to offer a unifying framework for (digital) service innovation that applies to both physical and digital service provisions.

This paper questions the commonly perpetuated idea that DSI fundamentally changes the nature of innovation. Instead, it highlights resource liquification—the decoupling of information from the technologies that store, transmit, or process this information—as a distinguishing characteristic of DSI. Liquification, however, does not affect the relational and institutional nature of service innovation, which is always characterized by (1) the emergence of novel outcomes, (2) distributed governance and (3) symbiotic design. Instead, liquification makes these three characteristics more salient.

In presenting a cohesive service innovation framework, this study underscores that all innovation processes are rooted in combinatorial evolution. Here, service-providing actors (re)combine technologies (or more generally, institutions) to adapt their value cocreation practices. This research demonstrates that such (re)combinations exhibit emergence, distributed governance and symbiotic design. While these characteristics may initially seem novel and unique to DSI, it reveals that their fundamental mechanisms are not limited to digital service ecosystems. They are, in fact, integral to service innovation across virtual, physical and blended contexts. The study highlights the importance of exercising caution in assuming that the emergence of novel technologies, including digital technologies, necessitates a concurrent rethinking of the fundamental processes of service innovation.

Within food industry several changes and innovations are affecting the management of the entire supply chain (production, logistics, etc.). As strategy for the survival and competition, digitalization has assumed a crucial role during the pandemic emergence by causing the reconfiguration of traditional chains and business models. Framed in these premises, the research analyses how digital technologies have innovated the sub-chains of bakery products and pasta within food industry with reference to customers' interactions, delivery and marketing during the COVID-19 pandemic emergence.

Moving from a critical literature review about the perspectives of digital technologies within the tradition of food industry, action research has been adopted to analyze in deep a case study of the start-up “ArteBianca Delivery” located in South Italy. Through this method, researchers have been deeply involved within the start-up to face the challenge of transforming the marketing and customer care into digital ones due to the COVID-19 restriction.

Findings provide empirical evidence about the reconfiguration of the traditional business model of a family firm in the food sector into a digital one with the start-up “ArteBianca Delivery”. The marketing, delivery, e-commerce and customer care components of the business models have been supported and enhanced through the adoption of digital tools, such as mobile applications and social technologies useful both for users and for a more urgent digitization of company.

Implications for practice can be identified into the pattern of digital transformation implemented as well as in the opportunity of replication and contextualization of the results to other companies looking for setting up a digital strategy.

Elements of original contribution can be identified into: (1) the exploration of digital transformation in food family firms caused by the pandemic emergence, (2) the contextualization of the digital transformation to the sub-chains of bakery and pasta and (3) the geographical location of the case.

This study aims to propose and develop a new digital collaborative supply chain (CSC) model completely based on the emerging Industry 4.0 technologies. The digital model aims to support the main factors likely to affect CSC. This proposed model combines the most well-known digital tools such as blockchain technology, Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud computing (CC).

Motivated by its effective solution to enhance trust, traceability, transparency and minimize costs and risks, the combination of the most well-known digital tools such as blockchain technology, IoT and CC to develop a new digital CSC model is addressed in this research. This study first investigates and conducts a deep review analysis that explores how Industry 4.0 technologies can enable collaboration mechanisms. Second, based on an analysis of literature review, the main factors likely to affect CSC have been identified and analysed. Finally, the authors combine digital tools to support the identified factors to enhance transparency, traceability and trust by proposing a new digital CSC model. This proposed model will be used as a referential guide to encourage and motivate SC actors to collaborate in digital CSC.

This work provides many important contributions to theory and practice. First, role and impacts of the most well-known digital tools such as blockchain technology, IoT and CC for digitizing CSC have separately presented and developed. Second, the authors conceptualized a framework by developing a new digital CSC model. This conceptual digital model can be used as a referential guide for all SC actors in order to motivate them to collaborate in a modern, intelligent, secure and reliable SC. It can also support all factors affecting CSC.

The originality of this study is first investigating separately the roles and impacts of each digital tool on CSC performance. Second, the authors combine the most well-known digital tools such as blockchain technology, IoT and CC in order to develop an efficient, smart, modern and new digital CSC model. In this combination, CC is used as platform as a service enabling to link and connect the blockchain and IoT to support the main factors affecting CSC. Unlike to digital CSC model with only one digital tool, the proposed model is more realistic since depending on the information to be shared with other actors, the most appropriate tool will be automatically detected and used. This solution offers a large choice to SC actors for real time data and information sharing. In addition, the proposed model will largely enhance traceability, transparency and trust in CSC.