Purpose: This study examines the role of financial service providers (FSPs) in assessing the supply chain credit of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and how they help SMEs obtain supply chain finance (SCF) through an established digital platform using big data analytics (BDA).Design/methodology/approach: This study conducted data mining analysis on the archival data of China's FSPs in the mobile production industry from 2015 to 2018, using neural networks in the first stage and multiple regression in the second stage.Findings: The findings suggest that digital platforms sponsored by FSPs have a discriminative effect based on implicit BDA on identifying the quality and potential risks of borrowers. The results also show that tailored information utilised by FSPs has a supportive effect based on explicit BDA in helping SMEs obtain financing.Originality/value: This study contributes to the emergent research on BDA in supply chain management by extending the contextual research on information signalling and platform theory in SCF. Furthermore, it examines the distinctive financing decision models of FSPs and provides a solution that addresses the information deficiency and overload of both lenders and borrowers and plays a certain reference role in alleviating the financing problems of SMEs.

Purpose: Despite their crucial role in sustaining national economies, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are beset by the constraint of financing at better conditions. The purpose of this paper is to compare supply chain finance (SCF) solutions provided by commercial banks and financial service providers (FSPs) that help SMEs access financing.Design/methodology/approach: This study looks at multiple case studies using in-depth interviews with focal firms (lenders) to answer the research questions. In-depth interviews were conducted with three Chinese FSPs and three commercial banks providing working capital to the same SMEs. The unit of analysis is SCF solutions that have made the companies competitive in the industry.Findings: The case studies show that the acquisition of transaction information and business credit in SCF can reduceex anteinformation asymmetry. SCF utilizing receivable transfers, closed-loop business, relational embeddedness, and a combination of outcome control and behavioral control can also reduceex postinformation asymmetry. For these reasons, compared with commercial bank-dominated SCF, SCF adopted by FSPs in the supply chain can better reduce information asymmetry.Originality/value: This study contributes to the emerging literature exploring the impact of SCF on SMEs accessing financing. In particular, this study provides supply chain management and operations insights on SCF and their consequent influence. Previous research has focused on the direct dyadic relationship between lenders and borrowers while neglecting supply chain effects. Uniquely, this study explores the different ways commercial banks and FSPs implement SCF solutions.

Drawing on literature from environmental psychology and urban planning, this study evaluates the relationships between environmental satisfaction, residential satisfaction, and place attachment in the context of both rural and urban areas in China. A field survey was carried out with 490 valid questionnaires collected in rural areas and 420 from urban areas in China. Partial least squares path modeling was applied for testing the relationships between the three main constructs. The results indicate a significant mediating role of residential satisfaction between environmental satisfaction and place attachment, suggesting the importance of residential satisfaction in residents’ attachment-building to place. This study also found significant differences between rural and urban contexts with the mediating effect of residential satisfaction being absent from the rural sample.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify the two kinds of supply chain quality management (SCQM) capabilities: intra-SCQM and inter-SCQM, and explore the effect of intra- and inter-food SCQM on food safety and quality, and the effect of food SCQM on domestic and export performance through food certification and corporate reputation.Design/methodology/approach: Secondary data on food selling or processing firms in Western China were collected to test all the hypotheses. The data were then analyzed using the statistical technique of stepwise regression and inference was drawn based on the result.Findings: Through utilizing secondary data sources, it is found that intra-SCQM promotes sales in domestics market with mediating role of corporate reputation, while the realization of overseas performance depend both on intra- and inter-SCQM with mediating role of food certification.Practical implications: The paper study on food supply chain quality problem, the suggested approaches can be easily realized by agro-food companies to achieve international competitiveness by implementing both intra- and inter-SCQM. Meanwhile to Chinese domestic companies, it is important to strengthen inter-SCQM and food certification in order to achieve competitive advantage.Originality/value: Review of literature indicated that there is a dearth of open literature that discusses food safety from the perspective of inter- and intra-organizational management. Furthermore, it was also observed that there has been no study that has taken the safety signaling perspective. The current research tires to shed some light on this important, but sparely discussed issue.

Based on the resource orchestration perspective, this study attempts to explain the mechanisms underlying the “capabilities-advantages” causality. This is achieved by identifying the effects of different capabilities on small and medium suppliers’ (SMSs) supply chain financing. Based on a dataset of 418 vendors for three Chinese manufacturers, we tested the hypotheses and found that: (a) operational capabilities, including improvement capability and innovation capability, have positive effects, while the effects of digitalization capabilities are complex. This is because the positive effect of information interaction capability is partially mediated by digital technology adoption. (b) Those positive effects of improvement, digital technology adoption and information interaction capability will be stronger under a low level of supply risk. This is the first study to employ the resource orchestration perspective into exploring how to improve the supply chain financing of SMSs. This study also contributes to the research on SMSs’ financing and digitalization.