Research On The Relationship Among Relation-specific Investments,Supply Chain Learning Capabilities And Firms' Sustainability Performance

Nowadays,the global economy has shifted from a material resource-based economy to a knowledge-based economy.Knowledge has gradually replaced other assets and is considered to be the most important resource in business operations.Knowledge has become the main driving force for productivity improvement and economic growth.Organizational learning is of great importance to business management.In the context of supply chain,the scope of organizational learning gradually expands to supply chain learning.Improving supply chain learning capabilities is of great importance for Chinese manufacturing firms to improve the level of supply chain management.This dissertation has demonstrated multi-methodology including the qualitative and quantitative analysis,and the theoretical and empirical analysis.Firstly,this dissertation conducts a systematic literature review on supply chain learning,which contains the concept development,its antecedents,outcomes,the related theories,and comments on the existing research.Secondly,on the basis of exploratory case studies and existing literature,based on the resource-based view and the relational view,this dissertation hypothesizes the positive correlation among relation-specific investments,supply chain learning capabilities and sustainability performance,as well as the moderate roles of cultural compatibility,strategic compatibility and absorptive capacity.At the same time,based on the resource orchestration theory,the orchestration relationship between relation-specific investments and supply chain learning stages is also analyzed.Finally,through questionnaire survey,253 manufacturing firms' data are analyzed by PLS-SEM method to test the hypotheses.In this dissertation,the systematic review on supply chain learning provides some useful insights for future research.By studying the relationship among relation-specific investments,supply chain learning capabilities and sustainability performance,it has improved and broadened the related research.Moreover,it also has enriched and developed the contingency perspective of relation-specific investments research,and determined the specific matching mode of relation-specific investments and supply chain learning,which has established great foundation for further research.In practice,the results help supply chain firms to unify the knowledge of supply chain learning,to effectively manage and orchestrate the key resource of relation-specific investments.In the end,it will improve supply chain learning capabilities and sustainability performance,realize the optimization of resource orchestration,and to maximize the learning effect.Therefore,this study will be helpful to achieve sustainable development of supply chain.