Impact of digital Industry 4.0 innovations on interorganizational value chains: a systematic literature review

Abstract

PurposeOrganizations invest in novel digital innovations to improve their business processes. These innovations, including Industry 4.0 technologies, enable full organizational integration with business process management (BPM), thereby requiring interorganizational relationship (IOR) capabilities. Many organizations lack knowledge about areas of interorganizational (IO) capability for integrating digital innovations into their value chains. They therefore have difficulty understanding that, as a socio-technical concept, digitalization surpasses the intraorganizational level and requires tools to develop mandatory IOR capabilities. The authors’ systematic literature review (SLR) explores these capabilities within the discipline of BPM. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue.Design/methodology/approachThis SLR follows the standard methodology for structuring a broad research field. The authors assessed capabilities relevant to manufacturing organizations from 58 academic articles published between 2011 and 2021.FindingsBuilding on existing firm-centric capability frameworks, the authors developed individual capabilities into a novel framework of digital interorganizational value chain (DIOVC). The authors’ conceptual model provides a basis for researchers and practitioners to consider capabilities and the theoretical spectrum of IO value chains.Research limitations/implicationsFuture studies should validate these DIOVC capabilities as input for an updated model of BPM maturity aimed at improving business process performance through digital innovations.Practical implicationsThis study provides organizations with IOR knowledge, supports decision makers in governing digital innovations and develops IO capabilities to improve their value chain performance.Originality/valueThe authors’ DIOVC capability framework is robust, with constructs and dimensions grounded in the literature, demonstrating theoretical and practical relevance.