Adoption, assimilation and sustainability outcomes of AI and Industry 4.0 Technologies in supply chain

The push to digitalise supply chains reflects technology’s growing role in improving performance and sustainability. However, access to technology does not guarantee adoption or effective use, as adoption remains uneven with a variety of implementation challenges. Although Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Industry 4.0 Technologies (I4.0T) offer extensive opportunities for supply chain performance improvement, their impact depends on how well organisations integrate and assimilate them. The overarching aim of this thesis is to examine AI and I4.0T adoption and how adoption develops into sustainability performance in supply chain by evaluating the roles of technology readiness, technological capability and organisational agility in shaping this progression. This research comprises three interconnected studies: a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) and two empirical investigations. The SLR syntheses existing studies to evaluate AI’s contribution to sustainability and its implications for existing theories. The second study applies the Technological, Organisational and Environmental (TOE) framework and incorporates the Technology Readiness Index (TRI) to assess how readiness factors mediate AI and I4.0T adoption. Drawing on Dynamic Capabilities Theory (DCT), the third study investigates how technological capability and organisational agility mediate the relationship between technology assimilation and sustainability performance. The empirical analyses draw from data collected through an online survey from Nigeria, a context that provides valuable insight into how global theories operate beyond developed economies. By empirically testing this integrated model, this study bridges technology adoption and assimilation literatures often examined separately, enhances TOE’s explanatory power by positioning TRI as a mediator between it and adoption outcomes, contributes to DCT by showing how assimilation influences sustainability through distinct capability pathways that serve different functions and vary in their contribution across sustainability performance outcomes. The study offers practical and policy implications including the need for stage-specific strategies and success factors and the inadequacy of policies focused solely on encouraging adoption.