Purpose

There is a well-documented trend among businesses for applying continuously improving, technologically-supported processes. This trend, in part, responds to evolving and challenging business environments and competitive pressures. It also increasingly mandates the need for businesses to invest in improving their digital capabilities and is driven by the expectation that such investments will better equip them for uncertain times. The COVID-19 pandemic presented disruptions to the supply chain, logistics, operations, market demand and labour supply, with industry reports providing evidence that businesses with digital capabilities were better able to respond to such disruptions promptly and appropriately. The study aims to investigate the effects of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) technologies on business operations and supply chain resilience.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors surveyed 117 Australian manufacturing firms using an online survey and analysed the data by using the partial least square structural equation modelling method.

Findings

The authors found I4.0 capabilities directly and positively impact supply chain resilience and that incremental innovation acts as a complementary mediator for the I4.0 technologies’ relationship with supply chain resilience. I4.0 technology capability needs to first transfer to incremental innovation for operations resilience. The authors also found that incremental innovation and operations resilience are serial mediators in the relationship between I4.0 technologies and supply chain resilience.

Originality/value

This research linked the three research areas of I4.0 implementations, innovation capabilities and resilience. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there has not been a previous study that investigated all three constructs together. Also, this study considered operations resilience and supply chain resilience as two distinct constructs and found I4.0 technologies had differential effects on them. The findings, thus, provide a novel contribution to the resilience, organizational capability and innovation literature. The investigations make clear to business practitioners how investments in technology and innovation capabilities translate into the resilience that is required in periods of disruption to business certainty.

中文翻译：

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澳大利亚制造企业的工业 4.0 技术能力、弹性和增量创新：一系列中介模型

目的

在企业中有一个有据可查的趋势，即应用不断改进的、技术支持的流程。这种趋势在一定程度上是对不断变化和具有挑战性的商业环境和竞争压力的回应。它还越来越多地要求企业投资于提高其数字能力，并受到此类投资将更好地为不确定时期做好准备的期望的推动。COVID-19 大流行对供应链、物流、运营、市场需求和劳动力供应造成了干扰，行业报告提供的证据表明，具有数字能力的企业能够更好地及时、适当地应对此类干扰。该研究旨在调查工业 4.0 (I4.0) 技术对业务运营和供应链弹性的影响。

设计/方法/途径

作者通过在线调查对 117 家澳大利亚制造企业进行了调查，并使用偏最小二乘结构方程建模方法对数据进行了分析。

发现

作者发现 I4.0 功能直接且积极地影响供应链弹性，并且增量创新充当 I4.0 技术与供应链弹性关系的补充中介。I4.0 技术能力需要首先转移到运营弹性的增量创新。作者还发现，增量创新和运营弹性是 I4.0 技术与供应链弹性之间关系的连续中介。

原创性/价值

该研究将 I4.0 实施、创新能力和弹性这三个研究领域联系起来。据作者所知，之前没有一项研究同时调查了所有三种结构。此外，这项研究将运营弹性和供应链弹性视为两个不同的结构，并发现 I4.0 技术对它们有不同的影响。因此，这些发现为弹性、组织能力和创新文献提供了新的贡献。调查向商业从业者阐明了对技术和创新能力的投资如何转化为业务确定性中断期间所需的弹性。