Digital governance for supplier opportunism: The mediating role of supplier transparency

Abstract

Curtailing supplier opportunism is a critical concern for both business practitioners and supply chain researchers. However, ambiguity remains regarding the effective deployment of digital technologies (DTs) within supply chain practices to address this issue. Drawing on the asset orchestration perspective, we consider two DT deployment manners (i.e., breadth and depth) and examine their impacts on supplier transparency and supplier opportunism. We investigate 323 Chinese firms and use structural equation modeling to test the proposed hypotheses. We also conduct a scenario-based experiment involving 144 business managers to improve the robustness of our results. We find that although two DT deployment manners positively affect suppliers' cost and relationship transparency, only relationship transparency exhibits a statistically significant negative association with suppliers’ weak opportunism, rather than strong opportunism. More interestingly, of the two DT deployment manners, relationship transparency merely mediates the breadth – weak opportunism association. We advance research on supply chain governance by elucidating the nuanced role of DT deployment in curbing supplier opportunism. We also offer significant insights for firms seeking to reassess their digital supply chain plans, improve engagement with suppliers, and curb unethical practices.