Business Ecosystem Embeddedness and Supply Chain Competence: The key role of Knowledge Capacities

Abstract

Business ecosystems have gained an increasing interest over the last decade. This article focuses on its operational benefits by investigating how embeddedness in business ecosystems influences supply chain competence. Specifically, it considers the mediating effect of external knowledge capacities: absorptive, desorptive and connective capacity. Primary data from 271 European firms participating in business ecosystems were collected to to test three hypotheses using regression analysis with bootstrapping. Results indicate that business ecosystems embeddedness does not in itself improve supply chain competence. Rather, the relationship is explained through (i) absorptive and desorptive capacity directly mediating the relationship; and (ii) connective capacity, which increases supply chain competence indirectly by enhancing absorptive and desorptive capacity. These findings suggest external knowledge capacities could be components of dynamic capabilities. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper to demonstrate benefits of being embedded in business ecosystems other than in terms of innovation. It is shown that connective capacity boosts absorptive and desorptive capacity by enhancing the linkages upon which they are built, leading to superior supply chain competence. Finally, the paper provides newly validated scales for business ecosystem embeddedness and connective capacity.