Abstract
Digitalization is transforming supply chain management, reshaping buyer-supplier relationships, and influencing their dynamics in both positive and negative ways. Firms are investing in digital capabilities to enhance collaboration and operational efficiency, yet digital transformation presents both opportunities and challenges. While digital capabilities offer enhanced integration, resilience, and innovation, they can also introduce new challenges, such as power imbalances, relational conflicts, etc. Despite the growing body of research on digitalization, there is a limited understanding of its dual impact on buyer-supplier relationships, particularly in terms of how both digital resources and relational factors interact in a digital context.This thesis aims to bridge this gap by examining the complex interplay between digital resources and the dynamics of buyer-supplier relationships. Through three empirical studies, it explores the bright and dark sides of digitalization, providing a comprehensive view of its effects on innovation, conflict, and resilience. The first study conceptualizes a firm’s digital capability as a second-order construct comprising digital strategy, digital integration, and digital control capabilities. It examines how digital capabilities and digital leadership enhance supply chain resilience through interfirm integration, contributing to a more robust understanding of supply chain resilience in the digital era. The subsequent two studies delve deeper into the dimension of digital integration capability. Within buyer-supplier relationships, we particularly focus on the asymmetry of digital integration capabilities. Specifically, the second study investigates how digital integration capability asymmetry negatively impacts product innovation by reducing information sharing, with environmental dynamism and an innovative climate serving as key contingency factors. And the third study explores the moderating role of digital integration capability asymmetry and environmental complexity on the non-linear relationship between asset specificity and destructive and constructive conflicts in dyadic buyer-supplier relationships.
Together, these three studies offer both theoretical and practical insights for managing complexities related to digitalization in buyer-supplier relationships. Generally, the findings highlight the importance of balancing digital capabilities with relational practices to mitigate risks, foster collaboration, and build resilience in the supply chain.
| Date of Award | 15 Nov 2025 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Supervisor | Jing Dai (Supervisor), Chandra Irawan (Supervisor) & Antony Paulraj (Supervisor) |