The fourth Industrial Revolution is driving the creation of fully connected ecosystem. Organizations are now reshaping their strategies to become fully transparent, including their supply chain management. The area of supply chain digitalisation is starting to attract growing attention; however, its research status remains unclear. We set out this study to understand what constitutes the underlying structure of its research, what topics have been investigated, what areas need further attention, how the existing literature can be classified, and how the discipline can move forward. We applied a mixed-method approach using both quantitative and qualitative techniques to achieve this. A bibliometric analysis of 331 articles with 12709 references was first conducted to discover the underlying knowledge foundation and evolution of supply chain digitalisation, current attention, and grouping of research into distinct clusters. Further, a qualitative review through content analysis was performed to interrogate our quantitative results. Research implications, and directions for future research are also discussed.

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Service industries have chosen the significance of customers' satisfaction and loyalty in one side, and the retention of these customers in another side. Factors influencing the retention of customers in which brand credibility is one. Despite there have been studies targeting issues of brand, satisfaction and loyalty; this study included word of mouth to fill the existing gap in the Internet service providers in Malaysia. 120 respondents participated in this study, which all were customers of Internet services for at least 2 years. This study found that brand credibility has positive impact on word of mouth through customers' satisfaction and loyalty.

PurposeThis research aims at investigating the common practical problem of how procurement can be transformed from tactical and administrative to becoming an organizational strategic partner and indeed a competitive weapon, using modern technologies in particular. We investigated how procurement can be reinvented, from being digitized to digitalized to digitally integrated, ultimately contributing in business terms beyond supply chain effectiveness but also to profit generation.Design/methodology/approachA case study approach was designed to investigate three firms, each at very different stages of digital maturity in procurement. Interviews with managers, investigation of processes and documentary materials and in-depth follow-up discussions were conducted.FindingsThe iterative digitalization transformation discovered encompasses complexities rooted in organizational structure, supply chain design and the management of the technology for employees' uptake. There are both operations and strategy implications as a result. This initial research phase led to mapping a model of digital maturity as well as identifying its underlying constructs.Originality/valueThis research discovered that the implementation of digital technologies can lead the procurement function of the supply chain to completely grow out of its administrative and clerical shell into a strategic, consultative, value-adding and potentially revenue-generating function, thereby contributing to the well-being of not only the supply chain but also the entire organization.

In this paper, we explore why users’ experiences with emerging supply chain technologies comprise inflated expectations followed by disappointment in the early stages of adoption, as per the Gartner Hype Cycle. We used “affordance theory” to study how managers perceive emerging technologies to explain their adoption experience. Affordance theory indicates that perceived benefits—and goals and constraints—depend on the interaction between technology and the users, not on the technology alone. First, we used the literature for two purposes: first, to obtain characteristics of blockchain, Internet of Things (IoT), and artificial intelligence (AI) as emerging technologies; and second, to itemize generic goals, affordances, and constraints in adopting any supply chain technology. Next, we asked 400+ supply chain managers to select those affordances, constraints, and goals that they viewed as pertinent to their organizations’ supply chains for whichever of these three technologies they were implementing. Finally, we compared the responses across technologies for individual respondents (who selected more than one technology) and within the pool of respondents. We found that respondents who selected more than one technology made distinct selections individually for the different technologies relevant to them. The pooled responses across all respondents, however, prioritized the aggregated goals, affordances, and constraints in the same way, regardless of the technology, the organization, or the network features of the supply chain. Overall, it appears that the characteristics of the technology do not inform user expectations at the early stages of adoption. This initial disconnect—between characteristics and expectation—may explain the “inflated expectations” followed by the early “trough of disappointment” with emerging technologies in the Gartner Hype Cycle, as users focus on obtaining the same benefits for the supply chain from any new emerging technology. Only subsequent shared experiences can lead to the long “slope of enlightenment.”