2.1. Supply Chain Dynamic Capabilities
The concept of dynamic capabilities originated from firms, and Teece (1994) first suggested that firms that have been able to maintain a competitive advantage in the global marketplace tend to have timely responsiveness and rapid product innovation, and dynamic capabilities create this competitive advantage [
14]. Beske viewed the supply chain as a complex system and dynamic capabilities as a system of capabilities that can handle complex internal relationships in a turbulent environment and have the ability to change themselves [
15]. This concept is seen as a further development of the resource-based view of the firm (RBV), which assumes that a firm consists of a set of resources and that its sustained competitive advantage is derived from a portion of its rare, valuable, and hard-to-imitate resources. Supply chain dynamic capabilities can be defined as “the ability of an organization to actively build, expand, and adjust its resource base” by further coordinating the resources possessed by the supply chain [
16].
Scholars have made various claims regarding what constitutes the dynamic supply chain capability. Defee and Brian-S proposed a holistic framework of dynamic supply chain capability with knowledge acquisition and coevolution as the foundational capabilities [
13]. More scholars consider the supply chain dynamic capability as a higher-level capability, while flexibility and agility are second-level capabilities derived from the supply chain dynamic capability [
11]. Although scholars do not agree on this, there is a proliferation of literature on dynamic capabilities based on flexibility and agility. The knowledge base and organizational learning theory have also been the focus of continuous research on supply chain dynamic capabilities. In distinguishing the concept of dynamic capabilities from supply chain dynamic capabilities, Defee and Fugate pointed out that supply chain dynamic capabilities should be jointly formed by supply chain members. Therefore, supply chain dynamic capabilities must allow the entry of new knowledge and generate new capabilities based on the newly entered knowledge [
11]. Beske added to Defee and Fugate’s research by arguing that supply chain dynamic capabilities should also have the ability to bring new partners within the supply chain’s knowledge system and reconceptualize them [
17]. In addition, collaborative learning and collaborative organizational learning capabilities have been studied by scholars based on the knowledge and learning perspectives on supply chain dynamic capabilities [
18]. Supply chain synergy is the third most important capability that supply chain dynamic capabilities focus on. Allred et al. argued that supply chain synergy is an inimitable, scarce, and valuable dynamic capability, and the process of synergy is the process by which the supply chain expands its dynamic capabilities [
19]. Supply chain synergy has been recognized by many scholars as a component of supply chain dynamic capability [
20] and has gradually developed into a comprehensive collaboration capability consisting of three dimensions: information sharing, incentive alliance, and synchronous decision-making.
Synthesizing the aforementioned studies on dynamic supply chain capabilities, this study considers the following factors when defining the concept of dynamic supply chain capabilities. (1) The context of dynamic supply chain capabilities is that of environmental turbulence. (2) The dynamic capability of the supply chain is manifested by its flexibility and agility of the supply chain. (3) Supply chain dynamic capability is the process of forming new capabilities in a continuous cycle of supply chain synergy. (4) Knowledgebase and organizational learning influence the dynamic capability of the supply chain. Therefore, this study defines supply chain dynamic capability as the process of the supply chain perceiving changes, updating and accumulating knowledge in a turbulent environment under the direction of supply chain synergy theory, continuously integrating and reconfiguring internal and external resources, and developing new capabilities through organizational learning. It is comprised of the following elements: environmental turbulence, supply chain flexibility and agility, and the community of information sharing, incentive alliances, and synchronized decision-making–supply chain synergy.
2.2. Environmental Turbulence
The concept of environmental turbulence is mainly used to study the unpredictable external environmental changes faced by firms [
9], but it is rarely applied to supply chains. Unlike firms, supply chains face not only the unpredictability of the external environment but also serious uncertainty in internal relationships. The risks of supply chain disruption [
21], uncertainty in demand [
22], and uncertainty in delivery time [
23] are among the turbulent environments faced by supply chains. As a complex adaptive system [
24], the supply chain can be understood as a complex community that is constantly changing, and the complexity of internal operations and unpredictability of the external environment are objective uncertainty factors. Reviewing the studies of scholars on the turbulent environment faced by supply chains, it can be found that there are risks associated with supply and demand, trade, finance, and technology [
25]. Under the requirement of sustainable supply chain development, the green supply chain contributes to supporting low carbon and other aspects but faces complex and hidden risks due to too many uncertainties [
26]. Manufacturing industries that depend on high-end technologies and core components still face technological blockades [
27].
In short, the supply chain is facing an uncertain and unpredictable dynamic environment, and the factors affecting its stable operation of the supply chain come from various aspects. The turbulent environment faced by the supply chain profoundly affects its operations in the supply chain. For enterprises and the supply chain, turbulence in the external environment is both an opportunity and a threat. In a review of the supply chain dynamic capability theory, environmental turbulence affects all aspects of the dynamic capabilities of the supply chain, as described below.
According to scholars’ definitions of different dimensions of the supply chain dynamic capabilities, we can define supply chain flexibility and agility as the manifestation of supply chain dynamic capabilities. The turbulent environment drives companies to innovate, and this innovation is not only for the development of new products but also on business processes, forms of organizational learning between supply chains, and knowledge exchanges [
9]. Gomezel found that technological turbulence can seriously affect product development [
28]. Through an empirical study of 553 Japanese development projects, Song et al. found that technological turbulence has a significant impact on the ability to sustain innovation, such as new product development [
29]. A study in China found that technological turbulence significantly affects the positive relationship between technology integration and continuous innovation [
30]. Rojo et al. emphasized supply chain flexibility as a response to customer needs in an uncertain environment [
31]. Naylor et al. argued that supply chain flexibility enables organizations to be profitable in turbulent environments [
32].
When examining the relationship between environmental turbulence and the performance of supply chain dynamic capabilities from the perspective of knowledge accumulation and organizational learning, it can be found that, in a turbulent environment, companies in the supply chain will strengthen the exchange of experience and knowledge, and this accumulation will continue to innovate and remain competitive in terms of knowledge stock, product power, service quality, and governance level; improve the flexibility and agility of the supply chain; and create benefits for the supply chain in terms of cost, efficiency, and innovation. It creates benefits for the supply chain in terms of cost, efficiency, and innovation [
33]. In the new round of industrial change, technology and capital are no longer enough to build the core competitiveness of enterprises and supply chains, and only through learning can raw data such as information, experience, and communication be condensed into knowledge that can empower organizations, and the accumulation of knowledge can help organizations improve their performance and innovation [
34]. Some scholars have suggested that dynamic capability, as an important ability to cope with turbulent environments, relies heavily on the continuous learning ability of organizations [
35]. Empirical studies have also demonstrated that organizational learning has a significant positive impact on the performance of R&D alliances [
36], and based on this, we propose the following hypotheses.
Hypothesis 1a (H1a). Environmental turbulence has a significant positive relationship with supply chain flexibility.
Hypothesis 1b (H1b). Environmental turbulence has a significant positive relationship with supply chain agility.
Environmental turbulence also has a huge impact on supply chain operations. We can see that information sharing plays an important role in turbulent environments. According to Fawcett, firms actively exchange information with firms in their supply chains in turbulent environments to avoid the adverse effects of turbulent environments. At the same time, this information exchange strengthens the relationship between supply chain firms [
37]. The collaboration resulting from this information sharing can effectively provide competitive advantages to the supply chain, which further forms a more stable supply chain alliance [
19]. Information sharing and joint learning among alliance members can simultaneously strengthen the supply chain alliance. In the process of studying organizational learning at the supply chain level, scholars have found that the complexity of the supply chain environment makes the organizational learning capability very demanding on the cognitive ability of the firms within the supply chain. For firms within the supply chain, the complexity within the firm and the complexity within the supply chain make the organization invest more effort into organizational learning [
36]. In the knowledge economy, the information sources involved in the supply chain are extensive, and the inability to handle the massive amount of information makes the supply chain unable to gain greater benefits in organizational learning. At the same time, with the development of information technology, diverse information exchanges make supply chain knowledge scattered in various stages, which makes supply chain learning more difficult. This suggests that environmental volatility profoundly affects the exchange of information between supply chains while testing the stability of alliances between supply chain firms. Recent studies have shown that the integration and configuration capabilities of platforms have a significant positive impact on supply chain collaboration in cloud manufacturing environments, enabled by digital technologies, and environmental turbulence plays a positive moderating role in this influence relationship [
36]. In the new manufacturing scenario, supply chain companies with high environmental turbulence will improve their resilience through active information relationships and resource integration, while synchronized decision consistency can be achieved [
38]. It has been pointed out that, when market volatility is high, supply chain companies will be more active in inventory planning, demand forecasting, inventory management, and customer relationship maintenance, and during this process, they will act jointly, share risks and benefits, and achieve a higher level of synergy [
39]. These studies show that environmental turbulence can profoundly affect all the dimensions of supply chain synergy, so we propose the following hypotheses.
Hypothesis 2a (H2a). Environmental turbulence has a significant positive relationship with information sharing.
Hypothesis 2b (H2b). Environmental turbulence has a significant positive relationship with incentive alliances.
Hypothesis 2c (H2c). Environmental turbulence has a significant positive relationship with synchronization decisions.
2.3. Supply Chain Synergy
Synergy in management originated in Ansoff’s 1965 book Corporate Strategy, which defined synergy as the value bigger than the sum of its parts in the whole. Then, Herman Hacken proposed the theoretical framework of “synergy”, which is the synergistic effect of the collaboration of all parts of a system, emphasizing the effect of “1 + 1 > 2”, and the study of synergy has been put on the right track since then. Simatupang et al. defined supply chain synergy in terms of three dimensions: information sharing, synchronized decision-making, and incentive alliance, and it has been widely adopted [
40]. Information sharing refers to the degree of information sharing among firms in the supply chain, synchronized decision-making refers to the degree of dynamic control of business processes among firms, and incentive alliance refers to the degree of importance that firms attach to the supply chain at the strategic level. Numerous studies have investigated the impact of supply chain synergy on supply chains’ dynamic capabilities from different dimensions. Supply chain synergy can promote a strategic consensus among supply chain firms, and the degree of strategic consensus is positively related to the stability of supply chain alliances [
41,
42]. In a well-stabilized supply chain alliance, firms tend to focus on long-term rewards, trust each other, and form long-term commitments. If the degree of supply chain synergy is low, the synergy of information, technology, and capital among supply chain links is insufficient; much of the knowledge cannot be clearly expressed; and major breakthroughs in technological innovation [
43], strategic consensus, and resource integration cannot be achieved, making the organization less flexible [
44]. Some scholars describe supply chain flexibility as a continuous innovation capability [
45]. From this perspective, we find that all three dimensions of supply chain synergy have a significant impact on supply chain flexibility. Some scholars consider virtual organizations as an innovation platform for information sharing and knowledge integration among enterprises and proposed the influencing factors of the continuous innovation capability of virtual organizations from several perspectives, which indirectly indicates that information sharing and incentive alliances help improve supply chain flexibility [
46]. It has been proposed that information sharing and synchronized decision-making among member firms can promote knowledge interaction and generate innovative ideas. At the same time, firms are able to continuously innovate products, management, processes, and production techniques to quickly meet potential demands in accordance with the environment’s dynamic changes, further indicating that different dimensions of supply chain synergy contribute significantly to the dynamic capabilities of the supply chain [
47]. Based on the above analysis, this study proposes the following hypotheses:
Hypothesis 3a (H3a). Information sharing has a significant positive relationship with supply chain flexibility.
Hypothesis 3b (H3b). Incentive alliance has a significant positive relationship with supply chain flexibility.
Hypothesis 3c (H3c). Synchronization decision has a significant positive relationship with supply chain flexibility.
The supply chain agility is also deeply influenced by supply chain collaboration. Supply chain agility involves three key processes: procurement, manufacturing and logistics [
48]. Market sensitivity, network status, process integration, and virtual capabilities have an impact on supply chain agility. Studies of supply chain agility have found that the level of information technology, the level of information sharing, and the consistency of supply chain decisions all affect the supply chain agility to a greater or lesser extent. There is an “IT agility trap” debate on the effect of the information sharing level on supply chain agility [
49]. IT can achieve agility by accelerating information sharing capabilities, facilitating the synchronization of decisions, and responding quickly to changing conditions [
50]. Similarly, supply chain alliances have a significant impact on the level of information technology in the supply chain, and information sharing among supply chains requires consistency and sophistication in information exchange technology in the supply chain [
51]. Supply chain agility also requires the supply chain to have the ability to deal with emergencies. Considering the huge impact of COVID-19 on the global supply chain, the supply chain faces the risk of disruption at any time, and the chaos of the supply chain operation under emergencies exposes the problems when the supply chain works together. The lack of timely and adequate information sharing led to increased supply chain costs and wasted resources. The long-term disruption of logistics in some regions exposes the supply chain alliance to the risk of adjustment at any time [
52]. Long-term disruptions in logistics in some regions expose supply chain alliances to the risk of adjustment at any time [
53]. The ability to synchronize decision-making within the supply chain is also challenged under the influence of unexpected events. All these phenomena suggest that supply chain synergy has a significant impact on supply chain agility. Therefore, we propose the following hypotheses.
Hypothesis 4a (H4a). Information sharing has a significant positive relationship with supply chain agility.
Hypothesis 4b (H4b). Incentive alliance has a significant positive relationship with supply chain agility.
Hypothesis 4c (H4c). Synchronization decisions have a significant positive relationship with supply chain agility.
2.4. Supply Chain Flexibility and Agility
Flexibility in the supply chain, which was first proposed in 2005, is the capacity to quickly satisfy customer demand [
52]. Subsequently, it was gradually combined with enterprise competitiveness and environmental uncertainty. Wang et al. believed that supply chain flexibility could indirectly improve the competitiveness of enterprises by affecting the supply chain resilience [
53]. Some scholars define supply chain flexibility based on the enterprise resource view, and Voudouris used the margin of resources as a measure of supply chain flexibility [
54]. In defining supply chain flexibility, Ma Shihua also emphasized the sharing of resources among firms within the supply chain network [
55]. Under the requirements of supply chain flexibility, flexible manufacturing systems and other methods that can meet the changes in customer demand have been proposed [
56]. Scholars have differing opinions on the composition of supply chain flexibility. Ji et al. argued that supply chain flexibility is developed based on manufacturing flexibility and therefore focuses more on the ability to offer customers products and services in a turbulent environment rather than just referring to production capacity [
57]. Scholars generally agree that supply chain restructuring is an important component of flexibility. For example, Lummus et al. proposed a conceptual model of supply chain flexibility that defines logistics, information, supply network reorganization, organizational operations, and organizational design as the five components of supply chain flexibility [
58]. Li et al. [
59] argued that supply chain flexibility consists of information, operations, robustness, and reconfiguration capabilities. Regardless of the perspective from which supply chain flexibility is classified, the ability to respond to demand, efficiency of information exchange, and speed of meeting the demand for products and services are always the core capabilities of supply chain flexibility.
The idea of agility also originated from flexible manufacturing, and the definition of agility by the American Society of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) has always emphasized quality supply chain management on two successive occasions. As globalization intensified and the global division of labor led to the inability of a single company to cope with the turbulent environment alone, the idea of agility was gradually incorporated into the supply chain, and the concept of an agile supply chain was proposed [
60]. Scholars’ definitions of supply chain agility emphasize organizational responses to turbulent environments with a focus on processes. Blome et al. argued that supply chain agility is a series of processes internalized in the management of both supply and demand, which can be planned in advance or summarized as “improvisation” in different problem scenarios [
13]. Since the concept of supply chain agility is embedded in supply chain flexibility, supply chain agility can be understood as a manifestation of supply chain flexibility. The following hypothesis is proposed in this paper:
Hypothesis 5 (H5). Supply chain flexibility has a significant positive impact on supply chain agility.