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This paper positions market sensing, supply chain agility and supply chain adaptability as a coherent cluster of dynamic supply chain capabilities. The purpose of this paper is to understand how dynamic supply chain capabilities interrelate and their effect on supply chain ambidexterity.

Based on a survey of Pakistani manufacturing firms, a theoretically-derived model was tested in a structural equation model.

The results of the study show that a market-sensing capability is an antecedent of supply chain agility and supply chain adaptability. Furthermore, supply chain agility, directly, and supply chain adaptability, indirectly, affect supply chain ambidexterity. Supply chain agility, therefore, mediates the relationship between supply chain adaptability and supply chain ambidexterity.

The contribution of this study lies in: first, identifying dynamic capability clusters relevant for achieving supply chain ambidexterity; second, evaluating performance implications of dynamic capabilities in the supply chain, specifically supply chain agility and adaptability; and third, proposing a unique measurement of supply chain ambidexterity in the light supply chain theory, and empirically evaluating the relationship between dynamic capabilities and supply chain ambidexterity.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the antecedents of dynamic supply chain capabilities (DSCCs). The authors test entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and supply chain learning orientation (SCLO) as two antecedents of DSCCs.

The paper uses structural equation modelling to test a hypothetical model. Data are gathered from a survey of 275 operations managers in Pakistan’s turbulent manufacturing industry.

The findings suggest that the weaker direct effects of EO, in comparison to the indirect effects, indicate that an SCLO mediates the relationship between EO and DSCCs.

It is widely accepted that firms do not compete with each other, instead, it is end-to-end supply chains that fight for market dominance. Many scholars use the dynamic capabilities view to understand supply chain level competition. However, the dynamic capabilities view is firm-centric in its examination of how companies transform internal resources to compete in the external environment. The theoretical contribution of this paper is a roadmap of how to build dynamic, supply-chain level and capabilities by determining the key antecedents. This paper explains that DSCCs emerge when buyers and suppliers share strategic orientations. Firms with an EO and the ability to learn with supply chain partners are well-positioned to develop DSCCs. This provides a new angle to theory testing by indicating that dynamic capabilities are enabled by an EO and an ability to learn with supply chain partners.

Managers are given the building blocks of DSCCs, starting with fostering an entrepreneurially-oriented mindset in the company and then learning with supply chain partners. Entrepreneurially-oriented managers are encouraged to take risks and co-develop innovative ideas with suppliers during the supply chain learning process.

This study is one of the earliest efforts to determine the strategic orientations that antecede the emergence of DSCCs.

The environmental management of supply chains has become increasingly relevant in the recent era. Extant research proposes two main forms of mechanisms – collaboration and evaluation – for environmental supply chain management. Despite the wide use of these mechanisms and the empirical insight into the fact that they could be adopted simultaneously, it is unknown if, and, at which levels, environmental collaboration (EC) and environmental evaluation (EE) could be complementary or substitutionary in nature. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to gain a clear understanding into the plural forms of these mechanisms.

The transaction cost economics and relational exchange theory are used to ground the research hypotheses. The results are based on survey data collected from 145 US manufacturing firms. The authors employ polynomial regression as well as the response surface methodology to test the proposed hypotheses.

The results suggest that EC and EE can have an intriguing effect depending on the outcome measure. Specifically, the authors find the effects in the economic and the environmental/social domains to be significantly different.

While scholars acknowledge that collaboration and evaluation could act as complements, extant research does not propose and test models that specifically capture complementary and substitutionary nature of these mechanisms. Accordingly, the study makes the first attempt to empirically test for the effects of the simultaneous pursuit of EC and EE.

That knowledge acquisition from external sources can play a pivotal role in product design is a well-known fact. However, knowledge acquisition need not play a pivotal role in every context; it is also documented to have a dark side (i.e. negative impacts). Specifically, given that product stewardship, by definition, calls on each party in the product life cycle – including suppliers – to share responsibility for the environmental impact of products, the purpose of this study is to answer the question “whether knowledge acquired from suppliers plays a beneficial role in the context of product stewardship?”

This study focuses on the effect of knowledge acquisition on product stewardship and its subsequent effect on environmental performance. Given that the effect of knowledge acquisition could be moderated by firm-specific and relational factors, this study also considers the moderating role of knowledge exploitation and supplier opportunism. Using primary data, the hypotheses are tested using two-stage hierarchical ordinary least squares regression models involving valid instruments.

Though extant research doubts that knowledge acquisition will always be beneficial, this study adheres to the tenets of knowledge-based view and hypothesize that knowledge acquisition is pivotal to product stewardship and its subsequent impact on environmental performance. But the results suggest an intriguing double-edged effect of knowledge acquisition; while its direct effect on product stewardship is nonsignificant, it seemed to have a significant positive moderating effect on the relationship between product stewardship and environmental performance. But whenever knowledge exploitation and supplier opportunism are maintained at ideal levels, this double-edged effect of knowledge acquisition is successfully negated.

While knowledge acquisition is key for new product design, its specific role in the product design that incorporates environmental considerations is still not clear. By proposing that knowledge acquisition could instead have a double-edged effect within the unique context of product stewardship, the study makes an invaluable contribution to the extant literature on knowledge management within supply chain relationships.

The purpose of this paper is to examine when and how organizations create agility, adaptability, and alignment as distinct supply chain properties to gain sustainable competitive advantage.

The current study utilizes the resource-based view (RBV) under the moderating effect of top management commitment (TMC). To test the research hypotheses, the authors gathered 351 usable responses using a pre-tested questionnaire.

The statistical analyses suggest that information sharing and supply chain connectivity resources influence supply chain visibility capability, which, under the moderating effect of TMC, enhance supply chain agility, adaptability, and alignment (SCAAA).

The contribution lies in: providing a holistic study of the antecedents of agility, adaptability, and alignment; investigating the moderating role of TMC on SCAAA; following the RBV and addressing calls for investigating the role of resources in supply chain management, and for empirical studies with implications for supply chain design.

Digital platforms transform supply chains. However, no unified theoretical understanding of digital platforms exists. Thus, the underlying research aims at investigating platform theories for supply chain management tasks.

The authors conduct a systematic literature review to identify relevant theories in the context of digital platforms and synthesize the respective findings for supply chain management tasks.

In total, 43 papers and 41 different relevant theories are identified. The most prominent theories are the resource-based view, transaction cost economics, internalization theory and the dynamic capabilities approach. Digital platforms alter and change the boundary decisions of firms. Therefore, they have various implications for supply chain management tasks such as make-or-buy decisions or the orchestration of resources to sustain a competitive advantage.

The identified supply chain theories as well as platform theories and their overlap provide a meaningful starting point for discussing and developing new and platform-based supply chain management approaches in the B2B domain.

The conducted systematic literature review provides a first starting point for building a holistic theoretical approach to digital platforms in supply chains. Thus, the paper contributes a missing link for discussing digital platforms and their theoretical foundations for supply chain management tasks.

This study focuses on (re-)introducing computer simulation as a part of the research paradigm. Simulation is a widely applied research method in supply chain and operations management. However, leading journals, such as the International Journal of Operations and Production Management, have often been reluctant to accept simulation studies. This study provides guidelines on how to conduct simulation research that advances theory, is relevant, and matters.

This study pooled the viewpoints of the editorial team of the International Journal of Operations and Production Management and authors of simulation studies. The authors debated their views and outlined why simulation is important and what a compelling simulation should look like.

There is an increasing importance of considering uncertainty, an increasing interest in dynamic phenomena, such as the transient response(s) to disruptions, and an increasing need to consider complementary outcomes, such as sustainability, which many researchers believe can be tackled by big data and modern analytical tools. But building, elaborating, and testing theory by purposeful experimentation is the strength of computer simulation. The authors therefore argue that simulation should play an important role in supply chain and operations management research, but for this, it also has to evolve away from simply generating and analyzing data. Four types of simulation research with much promise are outlined: empirical grounded simulation, simulation that establishes causality, simulation that supplements machine learning, artificial intelligence and analytics and simulation for sensitive environments.

This study identifies reasons why simulation is important for understanding and responding to today's business and societal challenges, it provides some guidance on how to design good simulation studies in this context and it links simulation to empirical research and theory going beyond multimethod studies.

The view that supply chain learning (SCL) has become a fundamental capability that supply chains must employ to innovate and improve their financial, technological, operational, environmental and social performance is widely accepted. However, the SCL phenomenon is still understudied and not fully understood by scholars, decision-makers and government representatives. This article aims to make sense of the existing literature and to identify important research directions that require further attention.

This article reviews the diversity of SCL in the literature, proposes a typology of such a phenomenon, provides an overview of key articles in the literature and identifies a series of recommendations for the future development of the field.

This article combines two fundamental dimensions from the literature (i.e. SCL driver and SCL network) to produce a typology of four types of SCL: Captive, Consortium, Selective and Distributed.

The typology proposed here offers an important framework for supply chain decision-makers to rely on when implementing SCL initiatives. The implications of each type of SCL offer a robust rationale for decision-makers to adopt the most appropriate type of SCL or combinations of SCL types, given each situation. In addition, the typology supports policy-makers in further understanding the SCL phenomenon and creating effective innovation, economic development and sustainability policies through supply chains.

This article offers a novel typology that the authors hope will help scholars to advance the field of SCL in order to understand this important phenomenon. There is no good/bad/better/worse SCL type in the proposed typology, but the critical element for the success of SCL efforts is the level of fit between the type of SCL, the type of knowledge to be created and diffused, and the outcome supply chains aim to achieve with that learning effort. In addition, the authors coin the construct of “the learning supply chain”, which refers to a supply chain that learns constantly by employing all four types of SCL simultaneously.

The purpose of this article is to discuss the theme of managing operations and supply chains in the so-called “new normal”. It reflects the themes emerging from recent research and how these might be conceptualized.

The article reviews research presented at the EurOMA 2021 conference and eight papers subsequently developed into full journal papers. It considers conceptual themes contained in these papers and how they reflect recent turbulent events in the external business environment.

The article notes the themes of resilience in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic, environmental sustainability, especially climate change and the Sustainable Development Goals, and the significance of digital technologies. Additional themes relating to inter-organizational relationships, complexity and manager cognition are also considered. In order to provide useful insights for future disruptions, general concepts on epistemology and responsiveness are described.

The article discusses general principles across cutting-edge research in operations and supply chain management, to support improved performance to add economic and social value.

This paper aims to examine how supply chain integration capabilities inform green design strategy adoption and whether green design strategy can lead to higher levels of environmental and economic performance.

A survey-based approach was used to empirically test the study hypotheses. Based on 216 usable responses collected from automakers around the globe, the authors compared the results from two different data groups (i.e. Chinese firms vs Western firms) using the structural equation modeling approach.

In the Chinese context, both internal and external supply chain integration capabilities are significantly related to the successful adoption of a green design strategy. However, the relationships are not significant in Western context. Green design is found to positively impact environmental performance in both contexts; however, no significant relationship is revealed between green design and economic performance in either context. Finally, environmental performance was found to have a significant and positive impact on economic performance in both contexts.

The cross-sectional survey design that was focused only on the auto industry may affect the inferences of causality and generalizability of this study.

Managers should understand their specific organizational context first, and then strategically develop their external and internal supply chain integration capabilities to maximize their green design efforts for improved environmental performance. Companies can be certain that the more gains made in environmental management, the more economic returns can be expected.

This research contributes to the existing resource-based view literature by linking supply chain integration capabilities to green design strategy adoption in different organizational contexts. It also sheds a light on the association between green design and different performance dimensions and adds value to the current debate on the association between environmental performance and economic performance.