Digital technologies for transparent and sustainable supply chain management: A resource orchestration-based view in the textile industry

Implementing digital technologies is touted as the next big step for the firms aiming to improve sustainability in their supply chains. These technologies are often credited with the potential to improve transparency and achieve sustainability. Despite these claims, there is a lack of empirical research on the role of digital technologies enabling transparency leading to sustainability improvements. Accordingly, this study aims to explore the role of digitalization in addressing transparency and achieving sustainability in supply chains with a specific focus on the textile sector in an emerging economy, Pakistan. Drawing on the resource orchestration theory (ROT), this research examines how textile firms structure, bundle, and leverage existing and new digital resources to address transparency for improving sustainability and comply with the stakeholder requirements in the supply chains. Based on the insights obtained from 25 semi-structured interviews with industry professionals, this study identifies cyber-physical systems, data-driven, and information communication technologies as the key technologies driving the digital transformation. This study contributes to the existing body of knowledge by framing the findings in ROT to understand how firms in emerging economies that are generally deemed to be resource constrained organize, utilize, and leverage digital resources to improve transparency and achieve sustainability.