AI-Adoption for Outbound Logistics and Supply Chain Risk Management: A mediating role of Supply Chain CollaborationAuthor

Sammanfattning

In today’s digitally transforming world, SCRM is becoming crucial for the organizations. The COVID-19 pandemic has further contributed to the increased attention to AI-enabled risk management because companies with developed analytics showed significantly higher resilience to the impact of low supplies. This study examined how the AI adoption in outbound logistics (AI) affects supply chain risk management (SCRM) in the FMCG manufacturing industry in Pakistan. Also, the mediating impact of supply chain collaboration (SCC) on this relationship. The study is important due to new market setting (emerging market – Pakistan), the mediating process (SCC was previously not used as a mediator for AI and SCRM), Unique risk profile (FMCG manufacturing sector). The study testifies 4 hypotheses developed based upon the existing body of literature. An empirical data was collected through 7-Likert scaled questionnaire from 152 individual supply chain executives. The sample is restricted to the executives working in Pakistan’s FMCG manufacturing sector only and have knowledge about AI adoption in their organization. These two were set as a screening question for the questionnaire. CB-SEM and bias-corrected bootstrapping for mediation testing is used. All 4 hypotheses were supported by the empirical findings. The findings conclude that organisations should go for both - deploying AI directly in the risk related logistics functions, and also using AI to improve collaboration with supply chain partners - for maximizing the SCRM outcomes. The study also has few limitations in terms of sample size, cross sectional study, single-source self-report survey data, sector specified, specified for outbound logistics, and single moderating variable. These limitations open up future directions for the researchers.Keywords: AI adoption for outbound logistics, Supply chain collaboration, Supply chain risk management, FMCG manufacturing sector, Emerging Economies, CB-SEM, Bootstrapping, Cross sectional