How do collaborative culture and capability improve sustainability?

Achieving competitive advantages from a resource-based view is hardly sustainable in today's operational environment. This study emphasizes the need to build partnering capabilities and improve sustainability in the supply chain by coping with the fast-changing business environment. This research underlines the crucial roles of relation- and resource-sharing based collaboration, capabilities, and commitment in developing sustainable supply chain performance. This is the first study to empirically test the theory of developing triple bottom line-based sustainability involving dynamic capabilities and collaboration. Dynamic capability enables firms to create, modify, and reconfigure their available resources to compete in the fast-changing market environment, while collaboration is to work together to achieve a better performance and helps building dynamic capability. Results show that collaboration and commitment play a crucial role in building capabilities, which, in turn, allow firms to achieve sustainable supply chain performance. Collaboration, representing resource sharing and collaborative culture, influences sustainability directly and is mediated by capabilities and commitment. For effective capabilities and sustainability, both upstream and downstream collaboration are required. Culture- and commitment-related traits are strong for downstream collaborating firms.