title: Transforming supply chains: The role of digitalization and collaboration
Creators: name: Schlicht, Annika
Publisher: name: Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU)
Year: 2024

description: Today’s business environment is characterized by numerous challenges, such as resource scarcity, supply interruptions, climate change, and emerging continuous disruptions. These challenges provide new imperatives to supply chains (SCs), significantly influencing SC management and underlying business processes. The related limited predictability and prevailing uncertainty require appropriate present and future intra- and inter-organizational architectures and operations, influencing whole SCs and their individual players at the same time. Simultaneously, the digital age and the improved pos-sibilities to work together within and across SCs provide new transformational opportunities for or-ganizations. On this basis, the five articles of the underlying dissertation investigate the role of digi-talization and collaboration in the transformation of SCs by exploring SC collaboration under resource scarcity (Paper No. 1), digital technologies’ role in enhancing SC viability (Paper No. 2), antecedents to and capabilities for digital transformation (DT) in SCs (Paper No. 3), the interplay between DT and organizational culture (OC) (Paper No. 4), and digital technology-induced transformation of supplier relationships (Paper No. 5). Arising from their synergistic scope, these articles allow to reimagine SC management by investigat-ing and connecting intra- and inter-organizational approaches throughout SCs, including present and future imperatives of digitalization and the necessity of increased collaboration between organizations. The application of explorative single- and multiple-case study research, a thorough interview study, and foresight-oriented Delphi research yielded valuable insights. The findings provide critical assistance to decision-makers in rethinking their capabilities and establishing collaborative and digi-tal approaches and strategies to guide their SCs through an uncertain and complex environment of technological changes, omnipresent and rising SC risks, and new requirements to foster partnerships in SCs. The first article, “Investigating relational capabilities for supply chain collaboration under re-source scarcity: Perceptions from an interview study in electromobility”, explores the modalities of inter-organizational collaborations in environments characterized by scarce resources, grounding its approach on the relational view. The underlying methodology comprised an interview study with 28 SC experts from original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), suppliers, and consulting firms in the electromobility industry, unveiling six capability groups to collaboratively mitigate resource scarcity. These groups encompass knowledge networking, information sharing, co-adapting, resource sharing, governance networking, and risk sharing, which are composed of 22 relational capabilities. Con-trasting earlier research that employed a narrow view on resource scarcity at the intra-organizational level, the article is the first to identify inter-organizational capabilities that become prominent in collaboratively addressing resource scarcity in SCs. In addition, the research highlights that resource scarcity drives organizations to intensify their collaboration endeavors. Besides fostering relational rents in SCs, the application of the identified relational capabilities leverages competitive advantages of individual organizations when facing resource scarcity, urging decision-makers to take a proactive role in the implementation of the identified capabilities. In this regard, the research is the first to demonstrate how resource scarcity forces businesses to reconsider their collaborative capacities, emphasizing joint innovation and risk management in the face of uncertainty. The second research paper, “The role of digital technologies in enhancing viability in freight transportation–Empirical evidence from a Delphi study”, provides a comprehensive future-oriented elaboration on digital technologies’ influence on SC viability and its layers—sustainability, resilience, and agility—in freight transportation (FT). Thereby, the research extends recent academic findings about viable SCs, focusing on their interrelation with digital technologies. A triangulated approach, consisting of desk research, 31 interviews, and a subsequent workshop, formed the basis for 12 future-oriented projections. These projections were developed to explore the influence of digital technologies on the enhancement of viability, including different digital technologies while paying attention to their specific attributes and importance to SC viability. The projections’ expected period of adoption, desirability, and impact on viability and its layers were assessed in a Delphi survey by 85 experts in FT. Focusing on FT as the backbone of viable SCs, the results highlight the experts’ shared understanding of digital technologies’ role for viability in future FT, emphasized by 11 of the 12 projections reaching consensus regarding their expected period of adoption. Consequently, the study provides a crucial foundation for decision-makers in FT, guiding future technology adoption plans. In addition, significant correlations between the impacts of digital technologies on viability and the underlying layers of sustainability, resilience, and agility were identified. Concerning theoretical considerations, by contextualizing the findings in the dynamic capabilities view (DCV), the bridging character of digital dynamic capabilities (DCs) between digital technologies and SC viabil-ity is empirically derived. The third article, “Implementing Vital Dynamic Capabilities to Succeed in Digital Transformation: A Multiple-Case Study in Maritime Container Shipping”, is based on the significance of DCs as a success factor in DT efforts as identified in earlier literature. The maritime container ship-ping (MCS) industry is at the center of the investigation, considering that this industry has not been regarded adequately in earlier research and concerning its volatile and uncertain future regarding DT. Consequently, by focusing on the DCV, the paper unveils the role of DCs in DT efforts in the MCS industry. In particular, a cross-case analysis with 26 experts in MCS provided the basis for the classi-fication of digital sensing, seizing, and transforming capabilities, and uncovered antecedents that are required for the implementation of such capabilities. For instance, participating in innovation ecosystems, becoming strategically agile, and redesigning organizational structures represent identified capabilities to enable DT in the MCS industry. Moreover, the research unveils emerging benefits of DT in MCS, transforming MCS into a more digitalized, sustainable, and efficient industry that relies on service-based offers to customers. Overall, the article provides valuable insights for decision-makers in port authorities, carriers, and freight forwarders and prepares such organizations for their future operations in the digital age, displaying strategic guidance for investments in MCS and adaptations in DT roadmaps. The fourth research paper, entitled “How digital transformation impacts organizational culture – A multi-hierarchical perspective on the manufacturing sector”, draws attention to the interplay between DT and OC. Even though DT is not merely restricted to an organization’s application of digital technologies and further impacts business models, strategies, and culture of organizations, earlier research neglected the change and evolution of cultural dimensions in the context of the digital age. In particular, the development of the prevailing OC toward a digital OC has not been addressed in previous research. Arising from these limitations, the study investigated the transformation of a manufacturing organization in a single-case study with 28 experts from multiple hierarchies, addressing its OC five years ago, in the present, and five years ahead as a result of its DT program and contextualized the results in the adaptive structuration theory. In this context, the predominant challenges in this transformation and the dynamics of the cultural dimensions were explored in the digital context. The study identifies that DT transforms the OC toward increased collectivism, femininity, indulgence, and long-term orientation while reducing power distance and uncertainty avoidance. In addition, theoretical assumptions are empirically corroborated, indicating that DT represents an ongoing process, necessitating continuous effort to pave the way toward a digital OC. The findings imply the creation of an OC that enhances employees’ enthusiasm and readiness to interact and learn across different levels, resulting in an appropriate organizational structure that responds quickly to digital changes. The fifth essay, “Digital technology-driven transformation of supplier relationship management – A multiple-case study in the manufacturing industry”, unveils DT’s triangulated impact on technologies, processes, and relationships in supplier relationship management (SRM). By addressing supplier selection, monitoring, and development as vital processual pillars in SRM, the research overcomes limitations of previous isolated technological perspectives on DT in SRM. The multiple-case study included 18 organizations with 42 purchasing and supply management experts in the manufacturing industry. The empirical findings emphasize a holistic DT in SRM and contribute to the existing literature by including intra- and inter-organizational aspects. Based on the organizational information processing theory, DT corroborates its importance in improving process structures and relationships in SRM by obtaining a fit between information processing capacities and information processing requirements. Since the study unveils that supplier monitoring in SRM is strongly impacted on the technological side, whereas supplier selection and development jointly seize human and technological capabilities, it demonstrates the significance of DT toward SRM in its entirety, although the impact varies regarding technological, processual, and relational aspects. Based on the derived findings, decision-makers should implement the outcomes of DT in SRM, such as shared SRM activities and intensified collaboration.