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Based on signaling theory, this paper aims to explore the impact of supply chain transparency (SCT) on firms' bank loan (BL) and supply chain financing (SCF) in the context of voluntary disclosure of supplier and customer lists.

Based on panel data collected from Chinese-listed firms between 2012 and 2021, fixed-effect models and a series of robustness checks are used to test the predictions.

First, improving SCT by disclosing major suppliers and customers promotes BL but inhibits SCF. Specifically, customer transparency (CT) is more influential in SCF than supplier transparency (ST). Second, supplier concentration (SC) weakens SCT’s positive impact on BL while reducing its negative impact on SCF. Third, customer concentration (CC) strengthens the positive impact of SCT on BL but intensifies its negative impact on SCF. Last, these findings are basically more pronounced in highly competitive industries.

This study contributes to the SCT literature by investigating the under-explored practice of supply chain list disclosure and revealing its dual impact on firms' access to financing offerings (i.e. BL and SCF) based on signaling theory. Additionally, it expands the understanding of the boundary conditions affecting the relationship between SCT and firm financing, focusing on supply chain concentration. Moreover, it advances signaling theory by exploring how financing providers interpret the SCT signal and enriches the understanding of BL and SCF antecedents from a supply chain perspective.

This study empirically tests the relationship between supply chain finance (SCF) and firm performance. Moreover, this study also investigates the potential role of industry competition in the proposed relationship between SCF and firm performance.

A conceptual framework is developed and tested using secondary data collected from 122 non-financial listed firms on the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) for the period of ten years (2012–2021). Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analysis is performed in STATA to validate the proposed relationships.

The results highlight that SCF has a positive impact on firm performance. Moreover, industry competition positively moderates the relationship between SCF and firm performance.

This study would help firms in assessing the value of operational financing to their financially constrained suppliers/customers by adopting supply chain finance practices. Furthermore, this study will help understand the role of the competitive environment in supply chain finance decision-making.

The findings will help core firms better understand how implementing SCF benefits firm performance under high product competition, especially in emerging markets.

Although supply chain finance (SCF) aims to optimize capital flows in the supply chain process, its effectiveness in improving cost performance remains controversial. From the perspective of efficiency motives, this study aims to explore how the combinations of SCF solutions and traditional financing instruments lead to supply chain cost reduction.

A mixed-method approach is used in this study. First, using the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), the authors analyze 405 survey data across four industries in China and identify the configurations of financing instruments for supply chain cost reduction. Second, to better understand the reasons behind each configuration, the authors conduct the content analysis on the interview data composed of 24 Chinese companies.

The authors find that the effectiveness of SCF solutions for supply chain cost reduction is related to the focal company's use of traditional financing instruments. Moreover, compared with guaranteed financing, companies that use credit financing are more likely to adopt SCF solutions to achieve supply chain cost reduction. Finally, the effectiveness of SCF solutions in reducing supply chain costs varies greatly across industries.

The study’s findings provide insights for policymakers and SCF practitioners in the aspects of simplifying the SCF application.

This study contributes to the current literature by addressing the theory–practice gap related to SCF. The study also provides new understandings of factors related to supply chain cost reduction, as well as factors that influence SCF adoption.

Despite their crucial role in sustaining national economies, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are beset by the constraint of financing at better conditions. The purpose of this paper is to compare supply chain finance (SCF) solutions provided by commercial banks and financial service providers (FSPs) that help SMEs access financing.

This study looks at multiple case studies using in-depth interviews with focal firms (lenders) to answer the research questions. In-depth interviews were conducted with three Chinese FSPs and three commercial banks providing working capital to the same SMEs. The unit of analysis is SCF solutions that have made the companies competitive in the industry.

The case studies show that the acquisition of transaction information and business credit in SCF can reduce ex ante information asymmetry. SCF utilizing receivable transfers, closed-loop business, relational embeddedness, and a combination of outcome control and behavioral control can also reduce ex post information asymmetry. For these reasons, compared with commercial bank-dominated SCF, SCF adopted by FSPs in the supply chain can better reduce information asymmetry.

This study contributes to the emerging literature exploring the impact of SCF on SMEs accessing financing. In particular, this study provides supply chain management and operations insights on SCF and their consequent influence. Previous research has focused on the direct dyadic relationship between lenders and borrowers while neglecting supply chain effects. Uniquely, this study explores the different ways commercial banks and FSPs implement SCF solutions.

This paper aims to investigate small and medium-sized upstream suppliers' and downstream distributors' understandings of supply chain finance (SCF) arrangements and their decisions to adopt such schemes.

In this paper grounded theory-informed methods are employed, involving 56 in-depth interviews with informants from small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), banks and subject experts in the United Kingdom (UK) and Thailand. A category structure for the data is developed. The findings are then examined systematically from both a transaction cost economics (TCE) and non-TCE perspective.

SME members made sense of SCF through a core distinction between dyadic and triadic SCF arrangements. The former maintains independence between physical and financial supply chains, whereas the latter causes them to be closely coupled or even entangled. The SCF adoption decisions of SMEs were based on a consideration of four related aspects: relationality, awareness, control and context. The authors demonstrate the limits of TCE in explaining the findings, leading to a proposed combined theory of the transactional and, importantly, non-transactional influences on how SMEs make decisions about SCF.

Focal firms wanting their SME suppliers and distributors to participate in triadic SCF (TSCF), i.e. reverse factoring and distributor finance, need to understand that transitioning to such schemes involves the unwinding of existing financing arrangements, which may be problematic for SMEs. Moreover, it is important to be aware of SMEs' concerns, such as about what accessing TSCF might signal to the focal firm about their financial health and about the potential loss of control that might result from entangling the physical and financial aspects of supply chains.

This paper unpack the perspectives of both SME suppliers and distributors of large focal firms in supply chains. These firms appear less concerned with the economic advantages (transaction costs) of SCF and more concerned with the relational consequences or non-transactional costs of participation in a TSCF arrangement. The dyadic-triadic distinction provides a new and meaningful way of categorising SCF mechanisms, which also broadens the service triads’ literature from a focus on outsourcing services for a focal firm's customers to outsourcing financing for its suppliers or distributors. The paper also addresses gaps identified by Gelsomino et al. (2016) regarding the need for a general theory of SCF, for empirically-based holistic studies of SCF applications, and a tool for selecting SCF mechanisms.

Blockchain-driven supply chain finance (BCT-SCF) has recently been receiving increased global attention. A number of business programmes have been carried out using this approach, but existing research has rarely focussed on this novel SCF model. This paper aims to fill this gap by proposing a mathematical model to analyse the value of BCT-SCF.

First, this paper considers a multi-period two-echelon supply chain consisting of a capital-constrained supplier and a newsvendor-like retailer. Then, two financing channels are proposed. The supply chain actors can either factor accounts receivable (AR) from a bank or obtain financing through a BCT-SCF platform by which AR can be converted into a bill receivable and used to make payment. Further, to investigate the preferences of all actors between the two financing channels, this paper compares the two channels and examines how the degree of financial constraints and the cost of implementing the BCT-SCF model impact the financing preferences of all actors.

BCT-SCF model can help a supply chain realise its optimisation both in production and financing efficiency, the preference for the BCT-SCF model increases as the initial capital of supplier and the BCT-SCF platform usage fee rate decrease.

This research bridges the gap between theoretical analysis of BCT-SCF and its realistic application. The results demonstrate that with the BCT-SCF model, a win-win situation among supply chain actors is possible, which is helpful for the supply chain to choose a more efficient financing channel.

This research introduces a mathematical model based on the “receivable chain” of CZBank and the model is set in a multi-period supply chain, which is the first time BCT-SCF has been considered as part of a more complex but realistic background setting.

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.

Although supply chain collaboration (SCC) theoretically boosts the adoption of supply chain finance (SCF) through information sharing and cost savings, many companies with good supply chain partnerships still hesitate to engage in SCF. To disentangle this puzzle, this study aims to explore how two dimensions of information transparency (i.e. information quantity and information quality) and two types of transaction dependence (i.e. dependence on suppliers and dependence on customers) influence the relationship between SCC and SCF adoption.

This study uses secondary survey data from a Chinese bank, including 464 Chinese companies that have adopted SCF to varying degrees. This study then performs the logistic regression analysis to test the hypotheses.

This study empirically confirms that SCC shows a positive relationship with SCF adoption. More interestingly, information quantity negatively moderates this positive relationship, whereas information quality positively moderates this positive relationship. Most surprisingly, dependence on customers rather than dependence on suppliers strengthens this positive relationship.

This study makes theoretical contributions to the SCF literature by demonstrating the distinct moderating mechanisms regarding the relationship between SCC and SCF adoption. The findings also help companies reexamine their interactions with supply chain members.

Recently, in response to the credit crunch and the increased costs of financing, new solutions for supporting the financial management of supply chains, known as supply chain finance (SCF), have been developed. They exploit the strengths of supply chain links to optimise working capital. The purpose of this paper is to provide a reference framework that links together the objectives leading to the adoption of SCF solutions and several moderating variables.

This paper adopts a multiple case study methodology, analysing 14 cases of the application of SCF solutions among Italian companies.

The main findings are the identification of the different objectives leading to the adoption of SCF; the analysis of the impact of moderating variables (the level of inter- and intra-firm collaboration, the level of the trade process digitalisation and the bargaining power and financial strength of the leading firm) on SCF adoption; and the formulation of a reference framework supporting the effective adoption of SCF solutions.

This contribution is exploratory in nature; theory-testing contributions should be the focus of further research. Also, the sample is limited to Italian companies. Finally, the service provider’s point of view has been marginally taken into consideration in this study.

The article addresses the need for more empirical research on SCF. It provides a reference framework focused on the objectives and moderating variables leading to effective SCF adoption, providing a theory-building contribution on the general topic of SCF and on the specific topic of the adoption process of different SCF solutions.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the important role of supply chain risk management (SCRM) capabilities as pre-factors for SMEs to improve supply chain financing performance (SCFP), also incorporating the effect of supply chain integration (SCI).

From the intersection of SCRM and SCF literature, this paper proposed hypothesis to discuss the impact of SCRM capabilities on SCFP and the role of SCI, aiming at combine SCRM with supply chain financing management. The research model was validated applying structural equation modeling on survey data from 286 Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Four dimensions of SCRM capabilities have significant positive effects on SCFP with different significant levels, confirming that they are important pre-factors in supply chain finance (SCF). In addition, the impact of SCRM capabilities on SCFP differ when SCI varies, indicating the promoting effect of SCI.

SMEs should establish SCRM capabilities as supply chain risks greatly influence the evaluation of financial providers and the achievement of SCF. Meanwhile, SCI should be attached for it enables superior SCFP even if SCRM capabilities are relatively limited.

This study represents a pioneering attempt to analyze the pre-factors of SMEs in improving SCFP by combing SCRM with SCF management. Few prior studies have highlighted the importance of SCRM in SCF.