Managing the Innovation Adoption of Supply Chain FinanceEmpirical Evidence From Six European Case Studies

Logistics' contribution to corporate performance has increased over recent years, particularly due to supply chain innovations. Opposed to common innovations focusing on the improvement of product or information flow, supply chain finance (SCF) targets the financial flow and allows buying firms and their suppliers to improve working capital and reduce costs. However, the adoption process of SCF is complex and rather unexplored in academia. This article provides an early step in building knowledge about SCF and in particular how firms adopt SCF, why they adopt differently, and what role suppliers play in the adoption process. The objective was therefore to close the gap between our knowledge on product and information flow oriented innovations and financial flow innovations along the supply chain, namely SCF. For this explorative research, we opted for an inductive multiple case study approach with six European firms. Based on our findings, four sets of propositions are posited and an extended SCF adoption framework is proposed revolving around the interrelated adoption processes of buying firms and their corresponding supplier bases.