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Journal Article•DOI•

Linking digitalization and human capital to shape supply chain integration in omni-channel retailing

Shaohua Song, Xianliang Shi, Guang Song, Fahian Anisul Huq
19 Jul 2021-Industrial Management and Data Systems (Emerald Publishing Limited)-Vol. 121, Iss: 11, pp 2298-2317
TL;DR: The findings suggest that although digitalization requires retailers to accept the long-term investment challenges, it has a significant positive effect on the key of OCR strategy implementation, i.e. SCI.
Abstract: PurposeSupply chain integration (SCI) is key to implementing omni-channel retailing (OCR) strategy. In this paper, the authors explore the role of digitalization as a driver of SCI, as well the role of human capital (HC) in digitalization, using a knowledge management (KM) perspective.Design/methodology/approachAn empirical study was conducted using survey research. A sample of 188 omni-channel retailers in the Chinese market was analyzed using factor analysis and structured equation modeling (SEM) to examine the hypotheses presented in the conceptual model.FindingsThis study reveals that HC is positively related to the level of a firm's digitalization in OCR, and that digitalization is positively related to the retailer's SCI. Moreover, the authors found that employees' capital has a greater impact on digitalization than managers' capital, while digitalization has a stronger driving effect on internal and customer integration.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings suggest that although digitalization requires retailers to accept the long-term investment challenges, it has a significant positive effect on the key of OCR strategy implementation, i.e. SCI. The findings also provide evidence for the application of KM in OCR, as this theoretical lens enriches our understanding of the phenomena of SCI in OCR and provides explanation to our results by linking digitalization and HC.Originality/valueDigitalization is quantified and examined in OCR. Moreover, this study reveals the importance of HC on the implementation of digitalization and the different effects of digitalization on each dimension of SCI.

Summary (5 min read)

Jump to: [Introduction] – [RQ2. Does digitalization positively influence SCI in the context of OCR?] – [Digitalization] – [Human Capital in Digitalization] – [Digitalization in Supply Chain Integration] – [Knowledge Management] – [Hypotheses Development] – [Effects of HC on Digitalization] – [Effects of Digitalization on SCI] – [Sampling and Data Collection] – [Measurement of Constructs] – [Reliability and Validity] – [Results] – [Discussion of the Results] – [Theoretical Implications] – [Managerial Implications] and [Conclusions, Limitations, and Future Research]

Introduction

  • Retailers have increasingly embraced an omni-channel retailing (OCR) strategy to provide consumers with seamless shopping experience across channels (Rodríguez-Torrico et al., 2017; Shen et al., 2018) .
  • Brick-and-mortar retailers such as Macy's, Nordstrom, and Walmart are expanding their online offerings and introducing new modes, such as in-store fulfillment of online orders.
  • In a recent survey, 31% of retail managers said that a challenge of digitalization was that "it requires new skills that people don't have in their organization" (Aruba, 2020: P4) .
  • The complex and dynamic retail supply chain network and multi channels adds difficulty to realize SCI.
  • 2016; Song et al., 2019) , as one of the industries most affected by digitalization, recent scholars appeal for the development of quantitative research to explore the impact of digitalization on the OCR supply chain and the role of "human" (Hagberg et al., 2016; Cai et al., 2020) .

RQ2. Does digitalization positively influence SCI in the context of OCR?

  • Knowledge is a fundamental strategic asset that contributes to the improvement and success of supply chains (Attia and Eldin, 2018) .
  • Therefore, SCI can be considered as the strategic objective of KM.
  • Next, since digital infrastructures help organizations to gather, structure, transfer or apply explicit knowledge through integrative applications and allows the exchange of tacit knowledge through interactive applications (Schniederjans et al., 2019) , a digitalization-based solution may help to achieve SCI.
  • The authors study intends to contribute to the OCR supply chain research and practice by examining the relationships among HC, digitalization and SCI of OC retailers from the theoretical perspective of KM.
  • Section 4 describes the analysis process and the results of this study's empirical research.

Digitalization

  • Several existing studies have qualitatively confirmed the positive role of digitalization in fostering a stronger competitive edge.
  • Rakowski (2015) addressed how technology drives a new wave of productivity through the digitalization of key organizational and financial processes.
  • Büyüközkan and Göçer (2018) presented a comprehensive framework in which digitalization was divided into five parts, namely digital strategy, digital organization/culture, digital product/service, digital operation, and digital customer experience.
  • There is still lack of quantitative research regarding the role of digitalization in OCR supply chain management.

Human Capital in Digitalization

  • Management literature described HC as the sum of managers ' and employees' skill, attitude, and interrelationship (Jin et al., 2010; Flothmann et al., 2018) .
  • Managers are responsible for decision making and play a strategic role in the organization (Porter, 1980) .
  • Their specialized and analytical abilities within his or her specialty are important for making the right decisions, as well the ability to work effectively with people is essential for developing group collaboration (Benson et al., 1991) .
  • Kosmol et al. (2019) considered people's capabilities as a key factor in determining the success of digitalization because people and digital technology go hand-in-hand.
  • There are still research gap that should be filled.

Digitalization in Supply Chain Integration

  • As current competition is among supply chains and not between individual organizations, SCI is the key to gain competitive advantages (Song et al., 2019) .
  • Therefore, the realization of OCR requires not only the internal integration of retailers, but also the joint efforts with other entities within the whole supply chain (Cai et al., 2020) .
  • Supplier integration consists of a strategic collaboration between retailers and suppliers in all production activities (e.g. joint inventory decision) (Delic et al., 2019; Song and Song, 2021) .
  • Feng and Shanthikumar (2018) found that manufacturing firms are now able to obtain individualized customer data to personalize the sales process, product design and service through smart devices.
  • Shi et al. (2020) and Feyissa et al. (2019) found that digitalization is able to coordinate complex activities in a supply chain by facilitating improvement in a firm's collaborative and communication capabilities as well as their level of SCI.

Knowledge Management

  • Knowledge management (KM) is defined as creating, storing/retrieving, transferring, and applying knowledge inter-and intra-organizations (Alavi and Leidner, 2018) .
  • KM is considered vital to implementation of supply chain practice in a business environment characterized by rapid changes, technological advancements, changing customer needs and higher competition (Schoenherr et al., 2014) .
  • Apart from the broad application of KM in SCM field, KM perspective can also provide the theoretical lens to link HC and digital transformation (Büyüközkan and Göçer, 2018; Yahya and Goh, 2002) .
  • Research claimed that the authors are living in an era in which data is generated in huge volume with high velocity and variety (Alavi and Leidner, 2018; Attia and Eldin, 2018) .
  • Thus, human factors couldn't be ignored, as previous literature claimed that humans are the central bearers of knowledge.

Hypotheses Development

  • SCI requires retailers not only to manage internal knowledge, but also to absorb and acquire knowledge from external supply chain partners (Shou et al., 2018; Schniederjans et al., 2019) .
  • Based on the KM perspective, this study aims to identify the relationship between HC, digitalization, and SCI under the context of OCR.
  • This study's conceptual model is illustrated in Figure 2 and the rationale for the hypothesized model is explained below.
  • Previous literature on SCI showed that the influence of control variables (e.g. firm age, firm size) on the level of integration is relatively weak (Oh et al., 2012; Yu et al., 2017) .

Effects of HC on Digitalization

  • As KM is based on the ability of a firm's members to add value to business processes through the creation, sharing, codification and integration of explicit and tacit knowledge, managers play an essential role (Büyüközkan and Göçer, 2018) .
  • Previous literature has widely recognized that supporting top management is a critical enabler for strategic digitalization initiatives (Kosmol et al., 2019) and for digital technology use in organizations, because people engaged in key roles on digitalization initiatives ensure the collaboration between units (McKinsey, 2018) , Therefore, the authors propose the following hypothesis: H1.
  • First, retailers that have experts with rich digitalization knowledge realize the implementation of advanced tech solutions (Wang and Xu, 2018) .
  • Second, employees provide services directly to customers, so employee attitudes toward work affect their timely perception of consumer demand preferences and play an important role in improving the OCR digital experience (Hagberg et al., 2016) .
  • Third, high-quality employees are more capable of knowledge identification and absorption, team cooperation and communication within organization, leading them to accept the trends of digitalization (Park and Kim, 2018) .

Effects of Digitalization on SCI

  • Being aware of a company's knowledge management and using digital technology to strengthen it, can facilitate the internal integration (Gao et al., 2020; Wilkesmann and Wilkesmann, 2018) .
  • Third, digital technologies like AR and VR, can improve the seamless experience among channels, reflecting the application of digital knowledge in OCR (Delic et al., 2019) .
  • Therefore, the authors propose the following hypothesis: H3.
  • Second, digitalization ensures the timeliness and effectiveness of joint decision-making and knowledge sharing between retailers and suppliers especially during emergencies (Hübner et al., 2016) .
  • The use of new knowledge and technologies in the development process to significantly improve customers' purchase, delivery, and consumption patterns for products and services (Bell et al., 2017) .

Sampling and Data Collection

  • As the largest developing country and e-commerce market, the Chinese mainland presents tremendous value and potential to the retail sector.
  • In 2019, the overall revenue of Chinese retail reached 6T USD, and comprised of 57.8% of China's economic growth.
  • Before launching the questionnaire, the authors carried out the pre-test with interviews of three managers and three senior employees from OC retailers, and the necessary modifications were conducted based on their feedbacks to ensure the acceptability and understandability.
  • Since there was only one respondent for each questionnaire, common method bias (CMB) might have been a problem.

Measurement of Constructs

  • A comprehensive review of the studies across the fields of HRM, SCM, OCR, and digitalization in Internet reports (e.g. McKinsey, Bain) and academic researches was conducted to identify potential measures for the conceptual constructs.
  • Specifically, the measurements of managers' capital and employees' capital involve three dimensions: skills, attitudes, and interpersonal relationships (e.g. Song et al., 2020) .
  • HC emphasizes cross-channel departmental collaboration capabilities, and digitalization includes providing digital consumer experience.
  • Supplier integration mainly refers to the sharing of operational information (e.g. inventory information) and joint operational decision-making with suppliers.
  • Each item was assessed by the strength of respondent's agreement, with "1" indicating "strongly disagree" and "5" indicating "strongly agree".

Reliability and Validity

  • Exploratory factor analysis was conducted to ensure the unidimensionality of the scales.
  • All items had strong loadings (greater than 0.5) on the specific factor that they were intended to measure.
  • Table 2 demonstrates that all α values were above 0.8 and that all composite reliability values were greater than 0.8, thus confirming the reliability of the constructs.

Results

  • Structural equation modeling (SEM) with the maximum likelihood estimation method and LISREL 8.70 software were used to estimate the relationships among the constructs.
  • To minimize multicollinearity, the independent variables and the moderators were mean-centered (Marodin et al. 2017) .
  • Figure 3 shows the SEM results with the standardized coefficients for the significant paths.

Discussion of the Results

  • The authors findings provide substantial empirical support for the positive relationships among HC, digitalization and SCI in the context of OCR.
  • Different from the explanation of this phenomenon in existing papers, the KM perspective provides a useful theoretical lens to explain the findings in this paper.
  • Today, knowledge is an important strategic asset.
  • SCI relies on knowledge sharing and transferring within the whole supply chain (Schniederjans et al., 2019) .
  • The authors findings also indicate that digitalization has the greatest effect on internal integration.

Theoretical Implications

  • The authors study makes significant contributions to the extant literature.
  • On the one hand, to the best of their knowledge, this study is the first to investigate the relationships among HC, digitalization and SCI within the context of OCR.
  • Mostly focusing on manufacturing industries, it was unknown whether these relationships still exist in the context of OCR.
  • The theoretical lens of KM in this paper informs the development of conceptual model, where HC is the main facilitator, digitalization provides a creative solution, and SCI is the strategic objective, and adds explanatory power to their results (Zorzini et al., 2015) .
  • The authors reveal that digitalization as a creative solution which helps organizations to gather, structure, produce, convey, and apply knowledge have varied impact on the three dimensions of SCI -internal integration, supplier integration, and customer integration.

Managerial Implications

  • The managerial implications of this paper are three-fold.
  • First, their results motivate retailers to focus on the cultivation of HC, especially the employee level.
  • Second, the positive effect of digitalization on three dimensions of SCI has been confirmed.
  • Third, the authors also suggest retailers to pay more attention on internal integration.
  • Starting from internal digitalization, advanced technologies enable retailers to digitize and integrate resources and operations from physical and online retail channels.

Conclusions, Limitations, and Future Research

  • This study identifies the relationships between HC, digitalization, and SCI in the context of OCR based on a KM perspective.
  • Some findings are consistent with theoretical expectations and the findings of previous studies in that both managers' capital and employees' capital are positively related to the level of a firm's digitalization and that digitalization is positively related to the level of SCI.
  • First, the digitalization of industry is changing the roles and responsibilities of personnel, requiring transformation of Human Resource Management (HRM) functionalities (Zhou et al., 2020) .
  • Finally, in this paper, the authors developed the conceptual model without considering of any control variables.

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The University of Manchester Research
Linking digitalization and human capital to shape supply
chain integration in omni-channel retailing
DOI:
10.1108/IMDS-09-2020-0526
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Accepted author manuscript
Link to publication record in Manchester Research Explorer
Citation for published version (APA):
Song, S., Shi, X., Song, G., & Huq, F. A. (2021). Linking digitalization and human capital to shape supply chain
integration in omni-channel retailing. Industrial Management and Data Systems. https://doi.org/10.1108/IMDS-09-
2020-0526
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For citations, please refer to the published version:
Song, S., Shi, X., Song, G. and Huq, F.A. (2021), "Linking digitalization and human capital to shape supply
chain integration in omni-channel retailing", Industrial Management & Data Systems, Vol. ahead-of-print No.
ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/IMDS-09-2020-0526
Linking digitalization and human capital to shape supply chain integration in omni-channel retailing
Abstract
Purpose: Supply chain integration (SCI) is key to implementing omni-channel retailing (OCR) strategy. In
this paper, we explore the role of digitalization as a driver of SCI, as well the role of human capital (HC) in
digitalization, using a knowledge management (KM) perspective.
Methodology/Approach: An empirical study was conducted using survey research. A sample of 188 omni-
channel retailers in the Chinese market was analyzed using factor analysis and structured equation modeling
(SEM) to examine the hypotheses presented in the conceptual model.
Findings: This study reveals that HC is positively related to the level of a firm’s digitalization in OCR, and
that digitalization is positively related to the retailer’s SCI. Moreover, we found that employees’ capital has
a greater impact on digitalization than managers’ capital, while digitalization has a stronger driving effect on
internal and customer integration.
Research Limitations/Implications: The findings suggest that although digitalization requires retailers to
accept the long-term investment challenges, it has a significant positive effect on the key of OCR strategy
implementation, i.e. SCI. The findings also provide evidence for the application of KM in OCR, as this
theoretical lens enriches our understanding of the phenomena of SCI in OCR and provides explanation to
our results by linking digitalization and HC.
Originality/Value: Digitalization is quantified and examined in OCR. Moreover, this study reveals the
importance of HC on the implementation of digitalization and the different effects of digitalization on each
dimension of SCI.
Keywords: Digitalization, Supply chain integration, Human capital, Omni-channel retailing, Knowledge
management
Paper type: Research Paper.
2
Introduction
In this era of rising consumer demands and technological advances, retailers have increasingly
embraced an omni-channel retailing (OCR) strategy to provide consumers with seamless shopping
experience across channels (Rodríguez-Torrico et al., 2017; Shen et al., 2018). Brick-and-mortar retailers
such as Macy’s, Nordstrom, and Walmart are expanding their online offerings and introducing new modes,
such as in-store fulfillment of online orders. Online players such as Amazon and Zalando are opening their
own brick-and-mortar stores (McKinsey, 2020). However, the channel alignment is a complex task because
the challenges of selling through multiple channels will be made increasingly complex by innovation in
shoppable formats, and will require greater holistic, end-to-end visibility of supply chains (Chopra, 2016;
Rai et al., 2019). Only the joint efforts of every operation process in an entire supply chain enable the flow
of information and goods to become as efficient, flexible, fast and cost effective (Cai et al., 2020). Therefore,
supply chain integration (SCI) is key to a truly seamless OCR strategy.
In the context of OCR, the growing connectivity of devices, advances in artificial intelligence and
automation all present the opportunity for more seamless supply chain integration (Huq, 2021). For example,
retailers can use Big Data analytics to facilitate a streamlined and holistic view of customer behavior across
all channels, or blockchain to foster mutual trust and long-term commitment among supply chain partners
(Bain, 2020). Some big retailing brands, such as Amazon, views digital tools as core to its mission to get
ever closer to their supply chain partners as well as consumers, spending a heavy proportion of their revenues
on digital transformation. However, one study found that 84% of retailers acknowledge the need and
importance for digital transformation, but on average have spent around £1.5m on transformation projects
that have either failed or been cancelled (Aruba, 2020). The long-term investment challenge hinders the
digital transformation of retailers with a mindset that demands immediate results. Therefore, exploring
digitalization as the critical driver to the success of SCI of OC retailers could build confidence for retailers
to accept the necessity of major digital investment.
In order to adapt to the changes brought by digitalization to the implementation of SCI of OC retailers,
as the most difficult category of resource residing in firms, the importance of human capital (HC) cannot be
ignored (Prajogo and Oke, 2016; Song and Song, 2021). In a recent survey, 31% of retail managers said that
a challenge of digitalization was that “it requires new skills that people don’t have in our organization”
(Aruba, 2020: P4) .On the one hand, OC retailers need more multi-skilled talents who understand
information technology and participate in supply chain design, so as to realize precision marketing according
to customer demand, as well require employees to have affinity, communication and collaboration skills. On
the other hand, the implementation of advanced tech-solutions requires retailers to have the right, digital-
savvy leaders in place (Sima et al., 2020; Cai et al., 2020). Managers need to have a clear and consistent
digital transformation strategy take on rapidly expanding and changing roles. Moreover, to remove
employees’ resistance to change, employers need to change their employees’ attitude, to empower employees
to accept the trends of digitalization (iScoop, 2020). Therefore, individual capabilities deserve more attention
when retailers implement OCR strategy and digital transformation (Huq, 2021).
Although in practice, digitalization has brought huge changes to retailers’ supply chain management
(SCM), recent studies on digitalization has focused predominantly on the manufacturing and found that it
leads to significant changes to manufacturing supply chains (e.g. Rakowski, 2015; Xu and Long, 2020),
including the development of new products and services, operations, people and organizational management,
business models, etc. Additionally, previous studies linking digitalization and human resource management
3
(HRM) claimed a more capable HC creates more digital innovations in manufacturing sector (e.g. Sima et
al., 2020; McKinsey, 2020). However, in the OC change of retail industry, such conclusions based on the
manufacturing cannot be fully applicable to the retail industry because of their distinct industry
characteristics. For example, compared with manufacturers, OC retailers directly target individual
consumers and collaborate with many upstream distributors and suppliers (Adivar et al., 2019; McKinsey,
2020). The complex and dynamic retail supply chain network and multi channels adds difficulty to realize
SCI. Another example is that digital transformation in the manufacturing industry focuses on Research &
Development and production (Roscoe et al., 2019), while in the context of OCR is marketing, in order to
increase consumer satisfaction, excavate consumer behavior, and improve operational efficiency (Cai et al.,
2020). Industry attributes also cause the significantly different requirements for human capabilities between
manufacturing industry and the retail industry (Lee, 2017). Therefore, it is worth to further explore SCI and
its potential antecedents in OCR.
The retail sector and especially its supply chains are facing drastic changes. Although the significance
of SCI to the OCR strategy has been confirmed by the literature (Hübner et al., 2016; Song et al., 2019), as
one of the industries most affected by digitalization, recent scholars appeal for the development of
quantitative research to explore the impact of digitalization on the OCR supply chain and the role of “human”
(Hagberg et al., 2016; Cai et al., 2020). Considering the considerable opportunity brought by digital
transformation and the higher requirements for HC, this paper aims to explore how to promote SCI in the
context of OCR. We ask the following two research questions, by empirically identifying the relationships
between HC, digitalization and SCI:
RQ1. Does human capital cultivate digitalization of OC retailers?
RQ2. Does digitalization positively influence SCI in the context of OCR?
Knowledge is a fundamental strategic asset that contributes to the improvement and success of supply
chains (Attia and Eldin, 2018). In this study, the view of knowledge management (KM) is applied for the
following reasons. First, with the rapid change of customer requirements and the shortening lead time of
products, organizations depend on the active participation of partners in the supply chain and sharing their
needed knowledge to maintain competitive advantage (Attia and Eldin, 2018). Therefore, SCI can be
considered as the strategic objective of KM. Next, since digital infrastructures help organizations to gather,
structure, transfer or apply explicit knowledge through integrative applications and allows the exchange of
tacit knowledge through interactive applications (Schniederjans et al., 2019), a digitalization-based solution
may help to achieve SCI. Last, “people’’ are the main drivers of KM, as KM relies on cognitive processes
exercised by the human brain and involves socio-cultural interactions that digital technologies remain unable
to capture (Rojas et al., 2017). Fully extracting knowledge from the connections provided by digitalization
depends on human intervention (Roscoe et al., 2019).
Our study intends to contribute to the OCR supply chain research and practice by examining the
relationships among HC, digitalization and SCI of OC retailers from the theoretical perspective of KM. An
important contribution of this study is the confirmation of digitalization as the main driver of SCI in the
context of OCR, bringing retailers confidence to approach the long-term investment challenge of digital
transformation. It also provides evidence to support the application of KM perspective in the novel era, as
KM perspective provides a new insight to the conceptual model and the explanation of results. Additionally,
we also uncovered some interesting and surprising results, compared with prior studies. For instance, we
4
reveal that digitalization contributes most to internal integration, suggesting retailers should first pay
attention to the development of related digital technologies for internal integration to get a faster return. We
also suggest that OC retailers should exert more effort in developing employees’ capital (compared to
manager’s) to facilitate the application of digitalization, since our results expose that employees’ capital have
a greater impact on digitalization.
The remainder of this study is organized as follows. Section 2 reviews and categorizes related
publications (e.g., journal articles, theses, and internet reports). Section 3 discusses the conceptual models
of HC, digitalization, and SCI and puts forth various hypotheses. Section 4 describes the analysis process
and the results of this study’s empirical research. Section 5 presents a discussion on this study’s empirical
results as well as its theoretical and managerial implications. Section 6 considers the limitations as well as
possible future directions.
Literature Review
Digitalization
Digitalization is defined as the process of transforming an organization from a traditional to a new way
of working and thinking by using digital, social, mobile, and emerging technologies (Burnson, 2018). Several
existing studies have qualitatively confirmed the positive role of digitalization in fostering a stronger
competitive edge. For example, Rakowski (2015) addressed how technology drives a new wave of
productivity through the digitalization of key organizational and financial processes. Furthermore, for the
framework and measurement of digitalization, a few of literature offer contributions. Schniederjans et al.
(2019) linked KM with digitalization and put forth three pillars when implementing digitalization:
technology, process, and people. Büyüközkan and Göçer (2018) presented a comprehensive framework in
which digitalization was divided into five parts, namely digital strategy, digital organization/culture, digital
product/service, digital operation, and digital customer experience.
A few recent studies have stated that digitalization has also brought benefits to OC retailers such as the
redesign of cross-channel inventory policies and customer information databases, and the establishment of
consistency in customer service (Adivar et al., 2019, Li et al., 2019). Figure 1 shows the main application
of digitalization in OCR supply chain. Although interest in digitalization has been stimulated worldwide,
there is still lack of quantitative research regarding the role of digitalization in OCR supply chain
management.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Take in Figure 1
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Human Capital in Digitalization
Management literature described HC as the sum of managers’ and employees’ skill, attitude, and
interrelationship (Jin et al., 2010; Flothmann et al., 2018). Managers are responsible for decision making
and play a strategic role in the organization (Porter, 1980). Their specialized and analytical abilities within
his or her specialty are important for making the right decisions, as well the ability to work effectively with
people is essential for developing group collaboration (Benson et al., 1991). Employees on the other hand
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Knowledge management and Industry 4.0: a critical analysis and future agenda

[...]

Vagner Batista Ribeiro, Davi Noboru Nakano, Jorge Muniz Jr., Rafaela Brino de Oliveira
01 Jan 2022-Gestão & produção
TL;DR: In this article , the authors conducted a literature review on knowledge management and industry 4.0 (I4.0) implementation and indicated concerns involving workers and the technologies adoption, which can provide insights and assist researchers in future Operations Management practices and related researches.
Abstract: Abstract This paper aims to discuss how Knowledge Management (KM) can support the Industry 4.0 (I4.0) implementation. The paper analyzes the relevant literature and explores related research opportunities, which can provide insights and assist researchers in future studies. I4.0 technologies can influence work flexibility, autonomy, job performance and innovation, but the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge, especially on the shop floor, remain dependent on employees, indicating human concerns which can be supported by KM. We conducted a literature review on KM and I4.0 on 41 papers selected from the Clarivate Web of Science Core Collection, published between 2010 and 2021. Structured summaries were developed, that lead to broad themes. Findings indicate three themes relating KM and I4.0: Technology, which explores infrastructure demands for implementation and its influence on the knowledge creation process; KM and learning, which reinforces the importance of both hard and soft skills, and indicates the need to investigate enablers factors for knowledge creation and sharing; and Worker engagement, which consider communicational, cultural and trust-related aspects for worker's development. This paper explores the I4.0 implementation and indicate concerns involving workers and the technologies adoption, which can provide insights and assist researchers in future Operations Management practices and related researches.

2 citations

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Frequently Asked Questions (15)
Q1. What contributions have the authors mentioned in the paper "Linking digitalization and human capital to shape supply chain integration in omni-channel retailing" ?

In this paper, the authors explore the role of digitalization as a driver of SCI, as well the role of human capital ( HC ) in digitalization, using a knowledge management ( KM ) perspective. A sample of 188 omnichannel retailers in the Chinese market was analyzed using factor analysis and structured equation modeling ( SEM ) to examine the hypotheses presented in the conceptual model. This study reveals that HC is positively related to the level of a firm ’ s digitalization in OCR, and that digitalization is positively related to the retailer ’ s SCI. The findings also provide evidence for the application of KM in OCR, as this theoretical lens enriches their understanding of the phenomena of SCI in OCR and provides explanation to their results by linking digitalization and HC. Moreover, this study reveals the importance of HC on the implementation of digitalization and the different effects of digitalization on each dimension of SCI. The findings suggest that although digitalization requires retailers to accept the long-term investment challenges, it has a significant positive effect on the key of OCR strategy implementation, i. e. SCI. 

Although this study makes a significant contribution to the literature and practice, there are a few limitations that provide avenues for further research. Future studies could perform the multi-respondent survey to further improve the accuracy of the information. Future studies could investigate and compare the effect of potential control variables ( e. g. firm age, firm size, firm ownership ) on digitalization and SCI. 

As current competition is among supply chains and not between individual organizations, SCI is thekey to gain competitive advantages (Song et al., 2019). 

digital technologies like AR and VR, can improve the seamless experience among channels, reflecting the application of digital knowledge in OCR (Delic et al., 2019). 

employees provide services directly to customers, so employee attitudes toward work affect their timely perception of consumer demand preferences and play an important role in improving the OCR digital experience (Hagberg et al., 2016). 

retailers can create a network of cross-functional teams with end-to-end accountability that features fewer barriers, improving knowledge transferring (Schniederjans et al., 2019). 

Brick-and-mortar retailers such as Macy’s, Nordstrom, and Walmart are expanding their online offerings and introducing new modes, such as in-store fulfillment of online orders. 

leaders with good human skills can motivate employees to grow their careers and adapt to new trends (iSCOOP, 2020), supporting the sharing of both explicit and implicit knowledge within the organization (Chen et al., 2018). 

In order to adapt to the changes brought by digitalization to the implementation of SCI of OC retailers,as the most difficult category of resource residing in firms, the importance of human capital (HC) cannot be ignored (Prajogo and Oke, 2016; Song and Song, 2021). 

In this era of rising consumer demands and technological advances, retailers have increasinglyembraced an omni-channel retailing (OCR) strategy to provide consumers with seamless shopping experience across channels (Rodríguez-Torrico et al., 2017; Shen et al., 2018). 

OCR is characterized by operations with continuous information exchange, joint operations, and supply chain network across channels that enable a conflation of the order fulfillment process (Hübner et al., 2016). 

To effectively cope with the new challenges of the digital workplace, employees must develop specificabilities, skills, knowledge, and attitudes (Park and Kim, 2018). 

A few recent studies have stated that digitalization has also brought benefits to OC retailers such as theredesign of cross-channel inventory policies and customer information databases, and the establishment of consistency in customer service (Adivar et al., 2019, Li et al., 2019). 

Although in practice, digitalization has brought huge changes to retailers’ supply chain management(SCM), recent studies on digitalization has focused predominantly on the manufacturing and found that it leads to significant changes to manufacturing supply chains (e.g. Rakowski, 2015; Xu and Long, 2020), including the development of new products and services, operations, people and organizational management, business models, etc. 

considering SCI represents the extent to which a company can collaborate with partners and manage its processes to achieve effective and efficient flows of products and services to the final customer (Huo, 2012), it is reasonable to explore how to better promote SCI from the KM perspective.