Does everyone win in Supply Chain Finance? A multi-stakeholder analysis

There is one overarching central question defined in this PhD-research: “How can buyers, suppliers and financial and logistics service providers, throughout different stages of adoption, contribute to creating long-term benefits from Supply Chain Finance (SCF)?”. This research question contains two important elements: actors involved and a time element referring to different phases of adoption. While most research in SCF takes the buyer perspective, and to a lesser extent the Financial Service Provider (FSP) perspecive, in my PhD-research I also focus on the supplier and Logistics Service Provider (LSP) perspective, and show what is needed in collaboration between these actors to make SCF successful. Next to the adoption phase of SCF, I look at how SCF instruments are developed before they are adopted, and I compare benefits perceived before and after adoption in a longitudinal study. The research consists of four papers with large amounts of data, responding to a need for more empirical research in the field of SCF. Due to many areas in SCF having limited previous research mostly case study methodology is used. While SCF papers seldomly use theoretical lenses for the framing of results, this research both explores and applies such lenses. The first paper reviews the suitability of five lenses in understanding SCF. It concludes that agency theory, network theory, transaction cost economics and social exchange theory can help to build a stronger theoretical foundation, while the lens of collaborative networks is less suitable. Transaction cost economics is applied in the second paper, while further theoretical lenses are explored in the third and fourth paper (the resource-based view and innovation diffusion theory), altogether contributing to the development a stronger theoretical bases for the academic field of SCF. The results show that not only financial attractiveness determines the adoption decision of suppliers. Mainly uncertainty, in the form of bounded rationality and opportunism, influences the relationship between the supplier’s assessment of financial costs and benefits of SCF and the supplier’s decision to accept or reject an offer. The post-adoption results show that perceived benefits for suppliers can differ substantially before and after adoption, caused by both financial factors and non-tangible factors such as perceived complexity. Furthermore, the PhD-research shows the role for LSPs in offering SCF solutions is not always as logical and straightforward as presented in literature, since LSPs can face difficulties in forming the necessary alliances with FSPs and customers, and have challenges in turning such SCF services into price premiums to really capture value from it. The research gives practical insights for suppliers, it shows they can’t simply assume an SCF offer will be beneficial. The results give clear indications on how to critically assess SCF offers. For buyers and FSPs our results help in approaching suppliers in the right way to avoid rejections of attractive SCF offers. In general, results show that good communication between buyers and suppliers can contribute to the success of SCF, mainly by reducing perceived complexities. For LSPs the research contributes to understanding the potential value of SCF solutions and gives clear indications of the resources needed to offer SCF solutions, especially inventory financing (IF). In addition, for FSPs the research can contribute in exploring the collaboration possibilities with LSPs for jointly developing IF solutions.