Examining the Joint Impact of Digital Dexterity and Collaboration on Supply Chain Performance and Quality Management

This paper explores the effect of digital dexterity (DD) and supply chain collaboration (SCC) on supply chain quality management (SCQM) and supply chain performance (SCP). It further examines how supply chain relational capital (SCRC) moderates SCQM-SCP relationship. The theoretical foundation of the research lies in the Dynamic Capabilities View (DCV), Relational View (RV) and the Social Network Theory (SNT). We combine the technological, relational and quality-management connections in explaining how organisations could develop resilient, quality-focused and digitally agile supply chains. An instrument of a quantitative design that included a structured questionnaire was utilized to collect data from professionals in the petrochemical, transport, and manufacturing industries. Sixty non-coded responses were tested with hypothesis tests using a Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) with 5,000 (sample) bootstrapping to test hypotheses and determine reliability, validity and the significance of proposed paths. Findings indicate that digital dexterity (b = 0.395, p ' 0.001) and collaboration (b = 0.332, p = 0.012) have significant influence on SCQM which is highly related to SCP (b = 0.535, p = 0.001). The SCP is directly enhanced by the relational capital (b = 0.275, p = 0.039), yet the relationship between SCQM and SCP is not mediated by the former (b = -0.055, p = 0.346). The mediation analysis supports the hypothesis of partial mediation of DD-SCP path (b = 0.212, p = 0.013) and no mediation of SCC-SCP (b = 0.178, p = 0.052). The model covers a major part of SCP variance of 62.2% which indicates its high explanation ability. The model results complement DCV and RV by showing that digital dexterity and collaboration are complementary antecedents of SCQM, which is translated into a better performance.