Digital transformation for resilience and sustainable value creation: bridging the gap through resource commitment and dynamic supply chain capabilities

Abstract

Manufacturing supply chains face growing exposure to systemic disruptions, technological turbulence, and rising sustainability pressures, which challenge traditional assumptions of efficiency-driven supply chain design. A series of global shocks throughout the 2020s including the COVID-19 pandemic, geopolitical conflicts such as the Russia-Ukraine, US-Iran wars and increasing trade and energy disruptions have exposed the structural vulnerabilities of interconnected global supply networks. This has necessitated the organizations to rethink how they can achieve resilience, sustainability and value creation at the same time. In response, digital transformation has been extensively promoted as a solution. However, despite significant investments in technologies many businesses continue to fail to meet performance expectations.

This dissertation addresses this critical gap by developing a process-oriented and multitheoretical explanation of how digital transformation contributes to supply chain resilience, sustainability and value creation. Drawing on the portfolio of empirical studies and integrating perspectives from the resource-based view, dynamic capabilities, contingency theory, and the triple bottom line perspective as the primary theoretical foundations, this dissertation advances a capability-centric perspective. It argues that digital transformation (DT) creates value not directly, but through the effective integration of resource commitment and dynamic supply chain capabilities.

The findings reveal that digital transformation rarely exerts its strongest impact directly. Instead, its effects are mediated through capability development and amplified through supply chain resilience, which is reconceptualized as a foundational enabler of sustainability and, in advanced contexts, a contributor to sustainable business value creation. Furthermore, sustainability outcomes are achieved through operational mechanisms and strategic alignment, which act as pathways linking transformation to value. The study contributes to the body of knowledge by integrating fragmented literature into a coherent framework that conceptualizes DT as resource-enabled, capability-mediated, resilience-supported, and strategy-contingent process. The study offers a robust and applicable framework for comprehending how manufacturing supply chains can attain resilience, sustainability, and value-generating outcomes.