Leveraging Agricultural Supply Chain Resilience With Digital Transformation in “A Company+Farmers” Mode

This study presents a lightweight solution for digital transformation in the “A Company+Farmers” mode, integrating an agricultural production enterprise and farmer suppliers into an inter-organizational alliance. A Chinese nationwide agricultural enterprise was investigated as a case study; its digital transformation, combining enterprise social networks and artificial intelligence (AI), proved to be a low-cost solution for supply chain collaboration. A survey was conducted by employing partial least squares structural equation modeling to verify positive impacts on dynamic capabilities in an alliance environment. The findings indicated that enterprise social networks facilitate information sharing while AI facilitates knowledge sharing, building sensing capabilities. Information sharing is more conducive to high-quality collaborative decision making, whereas knowledge sharing is more conducive to making high-quality adaptive decisions. AI has potential values in sharing knowledge across organizational boundaries, helping members know how to seize opportunities, reconfigure resources, and consequently enhance overall resilience.