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This study aims to examine the implementation of agile practices in Industry 4.0 to assess the financial performance measurements of manufacturing firms. It also investigates the relationship between supply chain performance and financial performance.

The study is based on an experimental research design by collecting data from 329 responses from key officials of manufacturing firms. The analyses are carried out to explore this modern concept with the help of the SPSS program, which is used to conduct a confirmatory factor and reliability analysis and Smart-partial least square (PLS) version 4.0 with structural equation modeling.

This research demonstrates the positive effect agile supply chain strategies in Industry 4.0 may have on manufacturing companies' financial performance as a whole. Everything throughout the supply chain in Industry 4.0, from the manufacturers to the end users, is taken into account as a potential performance booster. The values obtained from the model's study show that it is both dependable and effective, surpassing the threshold for such claims. The research is supported by factors like customer involvement (CUS), continuous improvement (CI), integration (INT), modularity (MOD), management style (MS) and supplier involvement (SI) but is undermined by factors including postponement (PPT).

According to the findings of the study, Industry 4.0 firms' financial performance and overall competitiveness are significantly improved when their supply chains are more agile. A more agile supply chain helps businesses to more rapidly adapt to shifts in consumer demand, shorten the amount of time it takes to produce a product, enhance product quality and boost customer happiness. As a consequence of this, there will be an increase in revenue, an improvement in profitability and continued sustainable growth.

There are literary works available on agile practices in various fields, but the current study outlines the need to understand how supply chains perform financially under the mediating effect of agile supply chains in Industry 4.0 which contribute most to the organization's success. The study will aid companies in understanding how agile practices will further the overall performance of the organization financially.

Previous literature on sustainable supply chain management has largely adopted an instrumental view of stakeholder management and has focused on understanding the effect of powerful stakeholders who have a more decisive influence on an organization's supply chain decisions. Social enterprises have emerged as organizations that often aim to create impact by integrating marginalized stakeholders into their operations and supply chains. This study examines the trade-offs that social enterprises experience due to their moral stance toward stakeholder engagement, evidenced in their commitment to serving marginalized stakeholders, as well as the responses adopted to these trade-offs.

The study follows a theory elaboration approach through a multiple case study design. The authors draw on insights from stakeholder theory and use the empirical insights to expand current constructs and relationships in a novel empirical context. Based on an in-depth analysis of primary and secondary qualitative data on ten social enterprises, the authors examine how these organizations integrate marginalized stakeholders into various roles in their operations.

When integrating marginalized customers, suppliers and employees, social enterprises face affordability, reliability and efficiency trade-offs. Each trade-off represents conflicts between the organization's needs and the needs of marginalized stakeholders. In response to these trade-offs, social enterprises choose to internalize the costs through slack creation or vertical integration or externalize the costs to stakeholders. The ability to externalize is contingent on the growth orientation of the organization and the presence of like-minded B2B (Business-to-Business) customers. These responses reflect whether organizations accept the trade-offs at the expense of one or more stakeholders or if they avoid the trade-offs and find mutually beneficial solutions.

Building on the empirical insights, the authors elaborate on stakeholder theory with a focus on the integration of marginalized stakeholders by emphasizing a moral justification for stakeholder engagement, identifying the nature of the underlying trade-offs which can arise when various stakeholder needs are in conflict and examining the contingencies affecting organizational responses to these trade-offs.

This exploratory study aims to explore the operational and financial constraints faced by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in India during the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper highlights the role of supply chain finance (SCF) in the uncertain business environment caused by the pandemic.

The study adopts an inductive approach and conducts convergent interviews with 32 SME owners and bank officials who are associated with SME-related financial transactions. The analysis of the interview data has been done through a grounded theory approach.

The findings portray four key themes representing the operational and financial constraints faced by SMEs during the pandemic. Further, the study identifies four drivers of SCF adoption among SMEs, including capital constraints, high inventory turnover cycle time, high order fulfilment cycle time and long debtors’ collection period.

The study provides various insights to the managers and owners of SMEs to deal with the economic crisis and eliminate the financial pressure created by the pandemic. The study enlightens the policymakers about the struggles of the SMEs during the economic turmoil created by the pandemic and guides them to introduce the relevant policies to resolve their problems.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to identify the factors driving the SMEs to adopt SCF due to the economic chaos created by the pandemic. Also, the study theoretically contributes to the literature by developing a theoretical framework for SCF adoption based on grounded theory.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how over-reliance on buyer-supplier relational capital (created through the interconnected supply chain and social network) impacts firm performance in the context of the emerging market, i.e. India.

The study uses the Prowess database (on Indian firms) to identify the firms that rely heavily on relational capital and employs panel data regression analyses to test the effect of relational capital on firm performance (supply chain performance and financial performance).

The results show that over-reliance on relational capital leads to lower supply chain performance (proxied by supply chain cycle) and financial performance (proxied by Tobin's Q). The results also reveal that supply chain performance mediates the relationship between over-reliance on relational capital and financial performance. Together, these results indicate that over-reliance on relational capital created through the interconnected supply chain and social network for supply chain management may negatively affect a firm's competitive advantage, which in turn can significantly impede its financial performance.

In light of the supply chain literature and relevant theories, the study develops an objective understanding of over-reliance relational capital created through the interconnected supply chain and social network, by relying on a large panel dataset of manufacturing firms and hence contributes to the supply chain literature. Also, it presents a novel idea to operationalize the measure for relational capital using the Prowess database.

This study aims to investigate the impact of digital transformation on supply chain resilience. Additionally, the paper examines the mediating effect of supply chain process integration as well as the moderating effect of environmental uncertainty in the relationship between digital transformation and supply chain resilience.

Drawing on digital empowerment theory, this study proposes a theoretical model. Using survey data collected from 216 enterprises in China, the study employs structural equation modeling to validate the theoretical model.

The results reveal that digital transformation has a significant impact on supply chain resilience. Three dimensions of supply chain process integration, namely, information flow integration, physical flow integration, and financial flow integration mediate the relationship between digital transformation and supply chain resilience. In addition, environmental uncertainty including market uncertainty and technology uncertainty positively moderates the relationship between digital transformation and supply chain resilience.

First, this paper provides empirical evidence on both the direct and indirect effects of digital transformation on supply chain resilience. Second, this paper enriches the understanding of how supply chain integration impacts supply chain resilience in the digital transformation era by adopting a more granular perspective of process integration rather than broad external and internal integrations. Furthermore, this paper extends the knowledge of the role of external environment in digital transformation and supply chain risk management by examining the moderating effects of market uncertainty and technology uncertainty.

This study aims to test the market anomaly of herding behavior driven by the response to supply chain disruptions in extreme market conditions such as those observed during COVID-19. The authors empirically test the response of the capital market participants for B2B firms, resulting in herding behavior.

Using the event study approach based on the market model, the authors test the impact of supply chain disruptions and resultant herding behavior across six sectors and among different B2B firms. The authors used cumulative average abnormal returns (CAAR) and cross-sectional absolute deviation (CSAD) to examine the significance of herding behavior across sectors.

The event study results show a significant effect of COVID-19 due to supply chain disruptions across specific sectors. Herding was detected across the automotive and pharmaceutical sectors. The authors also provide evidence of sector-specific disruption impact and herding behavior based on the black swan event and social learning theory.

The authors examine the impact of COVID-19 on herding in the stock market of an emerging economy due to extreme market conditions. This is one of the first studies analyzing lockdown-driven supply chain disruptions and subsequent sector-specific herding behavior. Investors and regulators should take sector-specific responses that are sophisticated during extreme market conditions, such as a pandemic, and update their responses as the situation unfolds.

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.

This study aims to investigate the contribution of blockchain technology to supply chain risk management and its impact on performance among Indian manufacturing companies.

Drawing on a resource-based view, dynamic capability and system of systems theory, this study examines the direct relationships between blockchain, supply chain risk management and supply chain performance. The authors validate the mediating effects of three supply chain risk management components, namely supply risk management, demand risk management and cyber security management, on financial transaction reliability and information reliability. Data were collected from 204 Indian manufacturing companies that have adopted blockchain technology.

The results demonstrate that companies adopting blockchain technology have experienced positive outcomes in managing supply chain-related risks, financial transaction reliability and information reliability. These findings provide valuable guidance to managers, highlighting blockchain as a competitive advantage for supply chain management.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no previous research on blockchain-based risk management capabilities has been conducted.

Minimizing the impact on the surrounding environment and maximizing the use of production raw materials while ensuring that the relevant processes and services can be delivered within the specified time are the contents of enterprise supply chain management in the green financial system.

With the continuous development of China's economy and the continuous deepening of the concept of sustainable development, how to further upgrade the enterprise supply chain management is an urgent need to solve. How to maximize the utilization of resources in the supply chain needs to be realized from the whole process of raw material purchase, transportation and processing.

It was proved that digital twin technology had a partial intermediary role in the role of supply chain big data analysis capability on corporate finance, market, operation and other performance.

This paper focused on describing how digital twin technology could be applied to big data analysis of enterprise supply chain under the green financial system and proved its usability through experiments. The experimental results showed that the indirect effect of the path big data analysis capability digital twin technology enterprise financial performance was 0.378. The indirect effect of the path big data analysis capability digital twin technology enterprise market performance was 0.341. The indirect effect of the path big data analysis capability digital twin technology enterprise operational performance was 0.374.

This study examines the cognitive factors of adopting blockchain technology in various supply chain scenarios and its role in reframing the distinctive values of supply chain financing. Based on expectancy theory, this study explores the different profiles underlying the components of expectancy, valence and instrumentality.

This is a multiple-case study of four Fintech companies using blockchain technology to promote the performance of supply chain operations and financing.

The results show that blockchain-enabled supply chain finance (BSCF) can be classified into four scenarios based on the scope and purpose of blockchain technology applications. The success of BSCF depends on the profiles of BSCF expectancy (the recognized purpose and scope of BSCF), instrumentality (identified blockchain attributes and other technology combinations) and valence (the perceived distinctive value of BSCF). Blockchain attributes help solve information asymmetry problems and enhance financing performance in two ways: one is supporting transparency, traceability and verification of transmissions and the other entails facilitating a transformation to new business models.

This research applies a new perspective based on expectancy theory to study how cognitive factors affect Fintech companies' blockchain solutions under a given supply chain operation or financing activity. It explains the behavioral antecedents for applying blockchain technology, the situations appropriate for the different roles of blockchain technology and the profiles for realizing the value of blockchain technology.