How Does AI Play a Role in Shaping Supply Chain Resilience:A Case Study Based on Maitrox's Global After-Sales Supply Chain Management Practice
In the volatility,uncertainty,complexity,and ambiguity(VUCA)environment,building supply chain resilience is key to promoting high-quality development of the supply chain.In the era of the digital economy,the rapid development of digital technologies such as artificial intelligence(AI)provides new ideas for shaping supply chain resilience.Existing research often uses digital technologies such as AI as decision support tools to explore their promoting effects on process optimization and efficiency improvement.However,existing research has not yet conducted in-depth discussions on how AI collaborates with humans to coordinate internal activities in the supply chain to adapt to the external environment,as well as the mechanism by which AI shapes supply chain resilience.Human-AI interaction theory focuses on the interaction among humans,AI,and tasks.However,existing research on human-AI interaction has not deeply analyzed the impact of human cognitive factors on the application process of AI.The embodied AI cognition theory provides insights into the dynamic collaborative process between AI and humans from the perspective of human cognition of technology.This theory suggests that when organizations promote the coordination between AI and humans to drive development,they not only need to solve the problems of AI in technological application but also need to pay attention to the cognitive development of humans towards AI.This study,from the perspective of human-AI interaction and embodied AI cognition theory,uses the single case study method,taking Maitrox as a case study to explore the formation and dynamic evolution process of supply chain resilience driven by AI,as well as the role of AI in shaping supply chain resilience.This study proposes a human-AI interaction view based on embodied AI cognition,that is,the process of goal coordination,behavior coordination,and decision coordination in human-AI interaction is accompanied by a dynamic evolution of human cognition of AI from transparency to accountability and then to fairness.This process drives a three-stage transition from adaptive supply chain resilience shaping to sustainable supply chain resilience shaping,and then to transformative supply chain resilience shaping.Furthermore,the study reveals AI's differential role and its hierarchical development characteristics in driving supply chain resilience shaping,that is,the role of AI is not only a decision support of computational performance but also a mechanism of coordination and standardization.This is manifested as the deepening of the human-AI interaction based on embodied AI cognition,the nature of AI's influence evolves from instrumental to strategic role,the scope of its influence expands from a single point to the entire chain,and its role shifts from passive support to active participation.The theoretical contributions of this study mainly include the following three aspects.Firstly,this study proposes a human-AI interaction theory based on embodied AI cognition,which expands the understanding of human-AI interaction theory on human technological cognition.This study proposes that with the transition in the goal of shaping supply chain resilience,the application forms of AI are dynamically changing,and human understanding of AI is gradually evolving.The development of cognition promotes the next stage of goal construction and human-AI interaction.Secondly,this study deconstructs the differential role and hierarchical development characteristics of AI in the context of supply chain resilience shaping,responding to the call of Williams et al.(2017)to explore the relationship between digital technology and resilience development.Thirdly,this study provides insights into the underlying mechanisms of supply chain resilience evolution and the key driving forces for achieving stage transitions.It elucidates the shaping process of the three stages of supply chain resilience and the behavioral paths of the two transitions,expanding the theoretical boundaries of supply chain resilience research.This study also provides practical inspiration for enterprises to apply digital technologies such as AI to shape supply chain resilience in the digital economy era.