Addressing the relation between transparency and supply chain finance schemes

ABSTRACT In the wake of technological innovation, supply chain transparency has become a concrete avenue for long-awaited improvements to supply chain processes and practices. Transparency is of particular interest to Supply Chain Finance; however, it is yet empirically unknown whether and how benefits would materialise. Being at the interface of finance and operations, Supply Chain Finance aims at improving the inter-company management of financial flows. Nowadays, different financing schemes are offered foremost by cooperation between financial institutions and fintechs. Uncertainty remains on whether and how supply chain transparency would benefit these schemes to allow the adoption of more sophisticated, higher-value schemes. By applying the Gioia method, we analysed a series of interviews with experts from the Supply Chain Finance industry regarding transaction cost economics, agency theory, and dynamic capability. The resulting series of pragmatic, theory-grounded but practice-inspired propositions untangle the relationship and barriers between supply chain transparency and Supply Chain Finance. The propositions provide advances in the theoretical understanding of Supply Chain Finance and uncover relevant directions for future research. This poses the base for actionable results in future research and leads to an impact in research by addressing the concerns and tensions raised by Supply Chain Finance experts.

Since the financial crisis of 2008, Supply Chain Finance (SCF) has taken up interest among both academics and practitioners as a viable approach to improving the management of financial flows across supply chains (Gelsomino et al. 2016). The schemes ascribed to the SCF approach are usually presented as working capital management instruments benefitting the company implementing them and its supply chain partners (Gelsomino et al. 2016;Pfohl and Gomm 2009); as defined by Gelsomino et al. (2016, 348): SCF aims to optimize financial flows at an interorganizational level through solutions implemented by financial institutions or technology providers [fintechs]. The ultimate objective is to align financial flows with product and information flows within the supply chain, improving cash-flow management from a supply chain perspective.
SCF is mostly associated with reverse factoring, a financial arrangement in which a credit-worthy buyer facilitates access to credit to suppliers in cooperation with its own financial institution (Zhang, Zhang,  2019). Industry reports highlight how reverse factoring remains by far the most adopted SCF scheme (Extra et al. 2018), to the point that, among practitioners, SCF is often synonymous to reverse factoring (Liu, Ju, and Chan 2022;Grüter and Wuttke 2017). This is not simply a matter of customer preference (i.e. meaning that buyers prefer reverse factoring to other SCF schemes), as market studies highlight how most of the demand for SCF remains unmet (Botta et al. 2020). It is also not a matter of lack of potential alternatives, as sophisticated SCF schemes are well known in theory, from inventory-oriented financing schemes (e.g. Huang, Fan, and Wang 2019) to supplierled schemes (e.g. Chen, Zhou, and Zhong 2017) and agricultural financing (e.g. Qian and Olsen 2021). It is a matter of lack of alternatives offered. The question then arises of why do we not observe more sophisticated SCF schemes in the market. One of the reasons for this limitation seems to lie in the fact that, although said schemes are often theorised as superior in terms of performance, they require additional transparency on the underlying operational activities between buyer and supplier; for example, in terms of information available to the SCF provider on the underlying trade cycle, often bought by adopting innovative technology such as identification, location and distributed ledger technologies, cloud based computer systems or data science and artificial intelligence (e.g. Stute et al. 2021;Rajak et al. 2022;Olan et al. 2022;Liu, Li, and Jiang 2021;Yu, Huang, and Guo 2021). Huang, Chan, and Chung (2022, 498, 505-506) found that novel technologies are one of the key dimensions through which to analyse recent developments in SCF. However, much remains to be done to understand the topic. In the same article, the authors list the impact of new technology on SCF as the first direction for future research (ibid, p. 511). In a different literature review on SCF, Jia et al. (2020) list addressing how technological change affects the provision of SCF schemes as one of the main gaps to fill. Specifically, it remains unclear whether or under which conditions technological advancements would provide the level of information required for SCF providers to innovate their business models and offer more sophisticated schemes. We aim to fill this gap by addressing the theoretical problem of whether the availability of technology in itself is an antecedent for the development and adoption of more sophisticated SCF schemes, what other obstacles or barriers might lie there for the SCF industry, and more in general, how should research approach this fast-changing landscape. We summarise this problem in two questions: how is transparency changing the provision of SCF schemes, and what research directions are the most promising for analysing this phenomenon? In addressing these questions, we focus on sophisticated, yet underutilised, SCF schemes, such as purchase order finance, inventory financing, deep-tier financing, and asset-backed securitisation (Dong et al. 2021). We have collected data from experts in the field of SCF through a series of semi-structured interviews. We have focused on their experience, plans and expectations in relation to supply chain transparency and SCF. Following the Gioia method, we have analysed and categorised the information into first-order findings, second-order themes, and outcomes. Then, we have matched the outcomes with the theoretical constructs coming from three different, but widely applicable, theoretical lenses. As each supply chain involves agents as individual supply chain entities, transactions to enable informational, material and financial flows, and resources to enable these transactions, we analyse the interviews under the perspective of transaction costs economics (TCE), agency theory (AT) and the dynamic capability perspective within a resource-based view (RBV). These theories allow for the translation of the results of the Gioia method into inductive, practicegrounded, theoretical insights, which we have framed in a series of propositions.
The remainder of the paper is structured as follows: the second section provides an insight into the three theoretical lenses of TCE, AT and the contingent based approach of the RBV in context of SCF. The Gioia methodology applied to analyse the interviews is described in the third section, while section 4 explains the results and conclusions drawn from these interviews. The results from the interviews are reviewed through the lenses of the three theories, which allows the drawing of research propositions in section 5. The paper ends with conclusions stating theoretical and managerial contributions.

Theoretical lenses in the context of SCF
Implications and propositions in this article are derived from three different theoretical lenses. Following Dekkers et al. (2020, 2), identified theoretical lenses should (i) focus on the interaction between two or more actors in the supply chain and (ii) be suitable to cover financial aspects. We have limited these lenses to TCE, AT and the dynamic capabilities perspective within RBV. Table 1 summarises the complementarity of these theories within the context of SCF.

Transaction cost economics
TCE (Williamson 1979(Williamson , 1991(Williamson , 1998 deals with the transaction governance structure (TGS). In his seminal work, Williamson (1985) explains how a generic economic transaction tends to be regulated based on two key variables: (i) asset specificity, meaning transaction specific investments with limited value in alternative applications; the presence of asset specificity may result in small numbers bargaining (decrease in the number of alternative suppliers or customers) or even bilateral monopoly, which occurs if both the supplier and the buyer are locked into the transaction; (ii) opportunism, in order to mitigate which parties strive to implement contractual safeguards. Both of those variables, together with the basic assumption of bounded rationality on the part of the two contractual entities, leads to different types of TGS, varying from occasional highly standardised purchases, which require a minimum amount of governance, to long-term contracts with penalty or shared revenue clauses, equity investments, or even vertical integration. According to transaction cost economics, trust between parties is not equal to personal trust between individuals but based purely on 'calculated risk' (Williamson 1979). More generally speaking, TGSs are predicted on the assumption that asset specificity, frequency, and uncertainty (both behavioural and environmental) concur in increasing  (Williamson 1991;Zhang and Reichgelt 2008). TCE has been discussed in the context of supply chain management by Williamson himself (Williamson 2008), and it is commonly used as a theoretical lens in this field (e.g. Nyaga et al. 2013;Liu, Luo, and Liu 2009). More importantly, it has been widely used in SCF literature. Management of financial flows is increasingly seen as a relevant component of transaction costs, making TCE an appropriate lens for investigation (de Goeij et al. 2021). de Goeij et al. (2021 focused on explaining suppliers' choices in SCF (focusing on one specific SCF scheme, namely reverse factoring), illustrating how bounded rationality and opportunism allow for suppliers to accept (or reject) offers to join SCFs that they would otherwise reject (or accept). The results of the study showed that transaction costs from bounded rationality are mainly related to internal factors within the SME supplier organisation, and transaction costs from opportunism are mainly related to the supplier-buyer relation. Dekkers et al. (2020), while providing an overarching view of theoretical contribution to the field of SCF, identifies TCE as the one with the highest explanatory power. From a financial aspect's viewpoint, the concepts of bounded rationality, opportunism and assets specificity were highlighted in the findings of the study. Wuttke, Blome, and Henke (2013) used TCE as the theoretical foundation for the study which is one of the earliest in the field of SCF. The authors concluded that managers need to understand the working capital situation of a company's supply chain to decide whether to engage in SCF. Such findings overall support the explanatory power of TCE in the field of SCF. In Section 5, we explain how the underlying mechanism of TCE can be used to strengthen our observations related to asset specificity, frequency and uncertainty in the context of the paper.

Agency theory
AT is traditionally linked to the original work of Jensen and Meckling (1976) and, later on, to Eisenhardt (1989). The theory deals with principal-agent relationships, where the agent works for the principal and the parties engage in a cooperative partnership. As the principal and the agent might have different -and conflictinginterests, a so-called agency problem might arise; namely, how does the principal monitor and control the actions of the agent to ensure that its own interests are pursued optimally? This leads to costs, named 'agency costs', which traditionally come in three varieties: (i) monitoring expenses by the principal, meaning the costs related to the principal's effort in making sure that the agent maximises the principal's interests, (ii) bonding expenses from the agent to commit to the contractual or other obligations arising from the relationships, and (iii) residual loss, meaning the reduction in profit experienced by the principal as a consequence of the agent not maximising the principal's interests (Du et al. 2020;Arner, Barberis, and Buckley 2015). Adding to this initial view, Eisenhardt popularised (in relation to AT) the concepts of 'moral hazard' and 'adverse selection': namely and respectively the risk that the agent does not put forward the agreed-upon effort in a moment in which it cannot be monitored by the principal, and the agent presenting skills or knowledge that it does not possess before entering in a contractual relationship with the principal, again in a context in which the principal is not in a position to verify it (Tsai and Peng 2017). This led Eisenhardt to define outcome-based and behavioural-based contracts. Although in perfect conditions behaviouralbased contracts are preferable, when a principal does not know exactly what an agent has done, it is faced with the choice of investing in additional monitoring and controlling layers that provide transparency on the behaviour of the agent (at additional monitoring and bonding costs) or contracting on the outcome of the agent's behaviour, transferring risk to the agent and increasing residual loss costs (Tsai and Peng 2017).
AT is mentioned in some studies within the SCF domain. Wandfluh, Hofmann, and Schoensleben (2016) are especially interested in studying the context of multiple principals within the same company (e.g. two departments). Gomm (2010) focuses on the bank as the principal and companies as agents and looks at information asymmetry as increasing agency costs from the perspective of these actors. It is interesting to notice how studies in general do not tend to agree on the exact structure of the principal-agent relationship within SCF. More recently, Martin and Hofmann (2019) highlight how the theory can have different levels of relevance and provide different insights based on the 'principal-agent constellation' taken as unit of analysis, while Dekkers et al. (2020) question whether the 'traditional' roles of buyer and supplier as principal and agent hold for every instance within the domain of SCF. In terms of the impact of innovative emerging technologies on supply chain transparency, Treiblmaier (2018) advocates for future research to investigate how increased transparency (specifically in the context of blockchain adoption) affects the typical constructs within the theory.

Resource-based view -the dynamic capability approach
RBV represents an approach of a company's resources and capabilities to explain innovation and new strategic directions (Barney 1991). In his seminal paper, Barney states that resources need to be valuable, rare, imperfectly imitable, and not substitutable (VRIN) in order to lead to competitive advantage. The concept of the RBV relies on the assumption that resources and their resulting capabilities are heterogeneously distributed among companies (Barney 1991). To create competitive advantage, the RBV proposes to bundle and prepare resources to form the capabilities of a company. As the RBV approach reflects a static view, it ignores dynamic developments and changes (Pierce, Boerner, and Teece 2008). For this reason, Teece expanded the RBV to derive the approach of dynamic capability (Teece 2018). The theory addresses a constantly changing environment and explains how companies sustain and build up new competitive advantages (Pierce, Boerner, and Teece 2008). The approach examines the ability of companies to adapt to changes to enhance their competitiveness.
According to the dynamic capability approach of the RBV, the planning of resources and capabilities adapts to allow changes in time and adjustments with changing circumstances (Chowdhury and Quaddus 2017). Thus, the theory also supports an approach to test new bundles of resources and abandoning a certain bundle in case of additional information or changes in time reflects no further competitive advantage. This allows for building competitive advantages by adjusting dynamic changes (Chowdhury and Quaddus 2017). By addressing the integration of new resources, the approach provides the ability to set up capabilities to adjust to changing circumstances (Pierce, Boerner, and Teece 2008;Teece 2018). The adjustments, recombination, and the testing of new bundles of resources, combined with crafting and refinement of resources, ensue the transformation of business models. Teece refers to this as high-order (dynamic) capabilities, which are necessary to have skills to reengineer good business models along with new or changing opportunities. The individual resources of a company determine the speed and degree of its alignment to create new business models or to adapt to changing circumstances (Teece 2018). A critical feature of the dynamic capability approach is to interpret changes and to adapt early to gain competitive advantage (Pierce, Boerner, and Teece 2008). Strong dynamic capabilities foster sustainable competitive advantages (Teece 2018). The access and use of resources on the one side and the new bundling of resources and capability to form new business models on the other side can serve as a foundation to explain new approaches of SCF. The RBV as well as its dynamic capability approach already have been used to explain SCF schemes and their advantages. Ali, Gongbing, and Mehreen (2018), for example, applied the RBV to analyse the moderating role of digitalisation between SCF and the performance of a company. Chen, Liu, and Li (2018) used the dynamic capability approach to explain the SCF practice of an online retailer to accelerate collaboration with its suppliers to improve competitive advantage. Yuan, Liu, and Liu (2022) analysed the mediating role of supply chain capabilities on the positive effects on the SMEs' credit quality in SCF by information technology and information sharing. In addition, Elliot et al. (2020) evaluated how the resources and capabilities of a logistic service provider enable the application of sophisticated SCF schemes.
The three theories address various important topics in terms of SCF schemes. Table 1 below shows the connection between the relevant topics for SCF and the applied theories.

Gioia methodology for the analysis of interviews
Considering the exploratory nature of the sophisticated SCF schemes analysed and the lack of pre-existing knowledge on supply chain transparency in the field of SCF, especially from an SCF provider's perspective, we opted for an exploratory approach and adopted the Gioia method (Gioia, Corley, and Hamilton 2013); Figure 1 captures the overall methodology of the Gioia method that is subdivided into three main steps. Within the first step, the interviews are screened to identify the 'findings' (first order). The second step clusters these findings according to their similarity into 'themes' (second order). These themes contain common topics summarising the content of the findings. In the third step, 'outcomes' aggregate the findings into higher-order dimensions. Thus, the Gioia method builds the basis for a data structure (Gioia, Corley, and Hamilton 2013), providing a graphic representation of the progress from raw data to themes, and allows an analysis of outcomes with respect to the three theories of the firm.
To support this analysis we performed a series of semistructured interviews with experts in the SCF domain. The experts represent financial institutions and providers of technological platforms for the provision of SCF schemes, which we identify as 'fintechs'. Overall, we interviewed 11 companies, with a total of 13 interviewees; the main characteristics of the sample are reported in Table 2. Each interview ranged in time between 45 and 120 minutes. We selected the interviewees based on our pre-existing awareness of their knowledge and involvement in the SCF industry, while at the same time preserving some level of theoretical replication (Yin 2003). More specifically, we included financial institutions that are already active in providing or developing sophisticated SCF schemes, as well as financial institutions that are less open and therefore inactive to this kind of collaboration. At the same time, the involved fintechs range from more established platform providers with decades of experience, several ties to multiple banks, and a complex technological offer, to corporates that often exceed SCF, and to newer actors with less consolidated business models. The interviews were complemented with data provided by the interviewees about the SCF schemes already in place, business models, or operational and technological processes, such as sharing internal presentations, confidential slide decks, or customer brochures. This contributed to reducing the single method / respondent bias and social desirability issues; the latter was further limited thanks to the decision to include, together with providers already active in providing sophisticated supply chain transparency-enabled SCF schemes, interviewees that are notoriously sceptical about the topic.
All interviews were transcribed, and the transcriptions, together with additional data, were coded following the three-step processes typical to the Gioia method. First, a set of 'findings' was identified through coding performed by individual authors. Each author tagged a different set of findings that were then collectively merged, joining similar ones, thus ending up with a final list of 49 entries. Those were grouped by emerging 'themes' in a second-level analysis, suggesting concepts that help in interpreting the different facets of what the interviewees were discussing. We aggregated the findings into 11 themes. The themes were then further merged together in abstract dimensions, which we called 'outcomes'. Outcomes form the basis for the interpretation of the dataset through the lenses of the different theories and identification of research directions. We identified a total of five outcomes. To provide an overview of the entire process, we report an extract of the findings, together with all the themes and outcomes, in Table 3. The entire framework with all the findings is available in Appendix A.

Results from the interviews
Overall, the application of the Gioia method leads to five outcomes. To facilitate the discussion, themes and outcomes are schematically reported in Figure 2.
The first outcome relates to technology affecting the characteristics of SCF schemes. This emerges from themes such as AI supporting the provision of credit facilities, technological developments supporting the application of SCF, and decisions being increasingly influenced by information available as a result of digitalisation. It represents emerging factors from interviews that link technology directly with the changes in how SCF schemes are provided to companies. The second outcome relates to SCF providers acquiring supply chain transparency through technology. This emerges from providers highlighting the role of technology in providing supply chain transparency and the intrinsic link between technology and transparency in SCF. The third outcome relates to the enhanced transformation in SCF that is led by increases in transparency levels.
Together, these first three outcomes relate to the relationship between the development of sophisticated SCF schemes and the constructs of transparency and technology. It appears from the data that transparency has a mediating role between investing in technology and the development of sophisticated SCF schemes. This is mostly captured by themes such as 'supply chain data allows decisions in SCF', which rely on findings discussing the impact of enhanced transparency on supply chain flows towards the SCF service provider as the enabler of innovative SCF practices. However, the findings also show the relevance of, for example, artificial intelligence and digitalisation in supporting SCF development. This empirically supports a similar conclusion found by Jia et al. (2020), where the authors theorise that investing in information technology increases the ability of the SCF service provider of processing information, leading to either a better map of financial networks or better business processes. Although our data agrees, we argue that those two paths are substantially different, as one is simply an intra-company investment in technology that leads to improved business processes, while the other requires the mediation of a more complex construct, i.e. supply chain transparency, that relates to inter-company considerations. This is not a trivial difference, from both a pragmatic as well as theoretical perspective. From a pragmatic perspective, SCF service providers might find it more difficult to grasp and work with the concept of supply chain transparency, compared to simply improving their internal processes; from a theoretical perspective, a contribution that aims, for example, at testing hypotheses related to investments in technology and SCF capabilities (Jia et al. 2020, 26) through a survey would better include the construct of supply chain transparency, as its mediating role seems to be well supported conceptually. However, if the survey questionnaire would simply inquire about IT investments in improving information processing capacity, supply chain transparency, and the provision of sophisticated SCF schemes, it is unlikely that it would find significant results, as our data show that specific investments are mediated by supply chain transparency in generating improvements to SCF practices, while others might simply lead to internal business process improvements or new SCF practices that do not rely on supply chain transparency.
The fourth outcome concerns the relation between developing sophisticated SCF schemes (based on information and capabilities acquired through supply chain transparency) and triadic and tetradic relationships required to provide those schemes. This links to findings highlighting the duplicity of roles between financial institutions and fintechs, the acquisition of supply chain transparency through partnership, goal (mis-)alignment between financial institutions and fintechs, and the role of regulators in transparency-related SCF schemes.
Finally, the fifth outcome is specifically related to partnerships between fintechs and financial institutions in relation to how they affect the provision of SCF schemes. This includes considerations such as the (numerically) unbalanced relationship between financial institutions

Fintech and banks have complementary roles in SCF
'Let the tech guys produce these tools or applications. And the banks be there to finance'. ... and fintechs (when the latter usually connects to many banks), as well as a lack of clarity on the complementarity or compatibility of their roles in providing SCF schemes.
These latter two outcomes highlight the complexity of relationships among actors that have agency in the development of sophisticated SCF schemes. This has several theoretical and practical implications. First, while SCF is vastly considered in literature to be a matter concerning the buyer-supplier dyad and a financial institution (e.g. Boer, Steeman, and van Bergen 2015; Martin  Table 3 and Appendix A for more information. and Hofmann 2017), the role of other parties is increasingly important. Fintechs are arguably increasing their relevance in the SCF market. This leads to a more complex picture of the SCF market, in which partnerships between fintechs and financial institutions are no longer limited occurrences or collaborations dominated by one party that, for example, simply outsources the technological development of its SCF platform to a third-party provider. Instead, they are more and more the result of strategic alliances, with non-financial parties playing increasingly critical roles in the development and adoption of SCF instruments (thanks to the development of technology). This makes pragmatic sense to be investigated, as SCF providers would find it interesting to understand the implications and operative conditions under which partnerships produce the best results. From a theoretical perspective, such alliances are not trivial, as they imply a strong cross-domain component: ongoing conversation on resources, value share, partnerships and alliances would find fertile ground for discussion in investigating the SCF field, where such diverse actors with radically different resources operate together. Secondly, data show the increasingly relevant role of regulators in influencing the development of SCF practices. The most prominent example of this is in banking regulation (e.g. Basel), where the different norms (such as capital requirements or regulation in models to assess risks) might pose a limit to the development of specific schemes. A further example pertains to accounting practices and the regulatory bodies related to them. Although the 'accounting issue' is a well-known constraint (to practitioners) on the adoption of more traditional post-shipment SCF schemes, it is essentially never taken into proper consideration in scientific literature (Wynne 2020). Similar considerations would likely affect sophisticated SCF schemes: scientific contribution investigating them would likely need to take the complicated interconnection of buyer, supplier and SCF providers and regulators into account, as this might hinder or at the very least influence the adoption of different practices.

Research directions in supply chain transparency and SCF
The results are analysed across the three different theoretical lenses adopted in this article. The different outcomes are addressed across the three theoretical lenses. The process is schematised in Table 4. This leads to the identification of theoretical insights, which are summarised in a series of propositions.

Propositions emerging from transaction cost economics
The analysis of findings through a TCE lens leads to propositions related to asset specificity, frequency and uncertainty.
Firstly, the use of SCF requires a fee paid to a digital platform provider that 'take some revenues out of it (P2)'. A financial institution that decides to partake in offering sophisticated SCF schemes through a digital platform considers the advantages higher than the costs occurring from it. The advantages can be realised through the harmonisation of data across the entire supply chain or, more precisely, the network (Roeck, Sternberg, and Hofmann 2020). In this context, a transaction-specific asset is an investment in technology that supports the use of digital platforms but involves the risk of losing productive value if the transactions were prematurely terminated (Vita, Tekaya, and Wang 2011;Williamson 1998). Although SCF schemes are specialised in the particular needs of the parties, the relationship does not need to have the characteristics of bilateral dependency. The implementation of sophisticated SCF schemes is an example of scope expansion of traditional asset specific investments from investments in fixed assets to relationship-based assets, and it therewith follows: Proposition 1: Technology-and relationship-based asset specific investments together increase supply chain transparency, facilitating the adoption and use of sophisticated SCF schemes.
Secondly, small companies farther upstream than first-tier suppliers have been in an offside position since SCF schemes came into existence (Huang, Chan, and Chung 2022). Our data show that SCF platforms and schemes that are able to address second -and deep-tier suppliers do exists, but it is also clear that the frequency of transactions must reach a sufficient level to justify inclusion in the scheme. As P1 states, sophisticated SCF schemes are 'financing program based on the data [. . . ] and analytics'. SCF is traditionally affected by the frequency and volume of transactions and most often limited to trade flows of higher valued goods that are frequently traded (Dello Iacono, Reindorp, and Dellaert 2015;Hofmann and Zumsteg 2015). This leads to the next proposition: Proposition 2: Transaction frequency is associated to supply chain transparency, and through that to adoption and use of sophisticated SCF schemes.
The third finding discusses uncertainty. The amount of data related to transactions must increase before the decrease of asymmetric information tapers off the financing risk. Interviewee B3 states: 'With extra information the lender could feel more secure or safer in extending credit'. Technologies like digitalisation and platform economy generate transparency throughout the supply chain that can reduce uncertainty through decision making (Mishra et al. 2018), which got confirmed in the interviews by the following statement: 'If you have visibility on a company operational performance, you don't need an invoice approved or even issued'. The cumulated data on trading might offer a company access to financing that used to be unavailable as uncertainty is decreasing. Accordingly, proposition 3 relates to the decrease in uncertainty: Proposition 3: The relationship between technology and adoption of sophisticated SCF schemes is mediated by reduction in behavioural and environmental uncertainty.

Propositions emerging from agency theory
Three main topics emerge in relation to AT with the outcomes of the Gioia method. The first pertains to the concept of agency cost, which is defined as the sum of monitoring costs (borne by the principal), bonding expenditures (borne by the agent), and residual loss, i.e. the reduction in welfare of the principal due to the decisions taken by the agent (Jensen and Meckling 1976). Financing a supplier without an irrevocable payment obligation from the buyer reduces residual loss for the financial institution (as it can charge higher margins), at the expenses of higher monitoring (for the provider) and bonding costs (for the supplier). The financial institution is faced with the decision of either bearing additional monitoring costs in sophisticated SCF schemes, or accepting the higher residual loss of reverse factoring, and often decides for the latter. For example, B1 states: 'If we have the visibility that this service has been completed by this lead operator in province A, his service has been completed. Why not we make the payment? 1 ' Or P1, who states the following while discussing their platform that connects buyers and suppliers and collects all information on the trade cycle: At any point in time the supplier could say 'I just received an order at 60 days to shipment. I am requesting an advance'. We have a network of banks that might be willing to offer that advance, that purchase order level financing.
Clearly, not all banks agree. When inquired about why they do not offer sophisticated SCF schemes, I4 states that 'the risk associated with less than perfect information' is the main reason, and recalls the example of the 'container full of rocks', i.e. the inventory financing fraud involving several financial institutions (such as Citibank and HSBC) and fake inventory receipts related to metal stored in the Qingdao port, in China (Bermingham 2017), and also: 'I'm saying this with a number of years of having observed this in the market. Fintech solutions [. . . ] haven't been able to say that with more information you have greater safety'. Essentially, they assess the reduction in residual loss (including loss through potential frauds) to be less than the increase in monitoring and bonding expenditures, while the beforementioned interviewees think otherwise. In summary: Proposition 4: Supply chain transparency enables sophisticated SCF schemes when the increase in monitoring and bonding expenditures is lower than the reduction in residual loss (i.e. when agency costs are reduced).
The second topic pertains to principal-agent configurations. Existing papers already identify that SCF in itself can hardly be reconducted to a single principal-agent configuration, being a triadic arrangement involving buyers, suppliers and financial institutions (Martin and Hofmann 2019). In addition, as recognised in literature (Botta et al. 2020) as well as in our sample, supply chain transparency almost inevitably introduces a new actor. This shifts SCF schemes from a triadic to a tetradic relationship (i.e.: buyer, supplier, financial institution and fintech). The principal-agent roles, or the specific configuration of the principal-agent, is non-obvious. For example, P5 says: 'banks give their own rates so we have no role to play there. And once the banks give the rate, we tell the anchors: this is what the banks are saying'. This suggests that the financial institution is an agent towards the buyer (i.e. 'anchor'), but later on P5 adds that they also broker offers from different financial institutions towards corporates linked to the platform ('We don't work with one bank, there are multiple banks. Every bank gives their own rates. And then we go back to our customers with a consensus'), which highlights the fintech's role as agent towards the financial institutions. We summarised this concept in the following proposition: Proposition 5: Sophisticated SCF schemes likely require tetradic relationships with non-obvious principal-agent roles.
The third and final outcome in relation to AT highlights the role of the regulator as a critical actor for SCF schemes, especially when evaluating the impact that supply chain transparency might have on them. So far, the role of the regulator has been mostly overlooked in SCF literature, while it has clear implications on the SCF principal-agent constellations that we are analysing. It provides guidelines that heavily affect whether and how those solutions could be used (B1 states that 'a great deal of our credit underwriting is depending on what the regulators want us to do'). There is a clear principal-agent relationship between the regulator and the financial institution. The regulator's objective is a function of ensuring financial stability and fairness and it entrusts the agents to perform actions that maximise its objective. Financial institutions, on the other end, have their own objective (i.e. wealth maximisation) which does not necessarily align with the principal's objective.
Proposition 6: The regulator's action influences the development of sophisticated SCF schemes by increasing bonding expenditures for the financial institution.

Propositions emerging from the dynamic capability approach
By focusing on the dynamic capability approach of the RBV, three propositions arise. The first proposition relates to technologies as additional resources that create supply chain transparency as a further capability. P1 expressed the relation of technical developments to supply chain transparency as follows: 'Digitization makes it easier to fully manage the transaction lifecycle, purchase orders, shipping documents. You can check financing at any point in time along the supply chain'. This implies that specific technological developments enhance transparency over transactions in the supply chain, allowing additional value creation in SCF (Sirmon, Hitt, and Ireland 2007;Yuan, Liu, and Liu 2022). Often though, it is the combination of technologies that enables transparent transactions along supply chain partners (Kille 2020). This can be achieved by bundling different technology resources, e.g. digitalisation with cloud management systems or concepts of platform economy to ensure data collection throughout the supply chain (Nandi et al. 2020). Representative statements from B1 and B3 confirm this. Respectively: 'It is the platform economy which provides a trigger of change' and 'A lot of companies looking into how to improve the visibility and share data between entities. The [. . . ] purpose is not only to be more transparent but also hoping that transparency can bring combined efficient means'. The bundling of technologies involves the expertise of fintechs. This is reflected in several statements, where it became apparent that several fintechs were realising 'supply chain transparency' as a capability to form a competitive advantage to be offered to financial institutions as expressed by P1: While financial institutions have the capability for 'financing', they rather acquire 'transparency' from the fintechs as highlighted by the following statement from B1: 'The bank was happy that the platform provided sufficient data, blockchain enabled so that security is ok, to give the supplier 70% of the [purchase order]'. Accordingly, it guides the following proposition: Proposition 7: Fintechs acquire supply chain transparency by bundling technological developments.
Keeping in mind that individual resources and capabilities determine the speed of a company's alignment (Teece 2018), the possibility of cooperation arose in the interviews by coupling resources and capabilities between companies to form a competitive advantage, correspondingly expressed by the following statement by B1: 'The tool helps the suppliers to come into the platform, see the purchase order, manage the purchase order, etc. So [the bank] has a tie up with a particular e-procurement firm [to gain the necessary transparency]'. The interview partners frequently expressed that the capabilities of 'transparency' and 'financing' often lie with different partners. Consequently, they have to be combined to offer new SCF schemes, e.g. 'The banks and fintechs have understood that it is not a competition. It is a partnership. The fintechs have to bring the technology and the banks have to bring the balance sheet' (B1). The availing capabilities of each partner need to be bundled to improve the competitiveness of both partners in the field of SCF. Accordingly, from the view of the dynamic capability approach of the RBV, each partner possesses a specific strategic capability that is hard to replicate and that provides a specific capability. It thus allows both partners their own right to exist, as phrased within the interviews with B1: 'Because fintechs do not have capital, they do not have capital requirements, they originate and sell [the information] to investors, including banks'. Along with high-order dynamic capabilities (Teece 2018), companies can thus use the partnerships to create sophisticated SCF schemes: 'All banks are now trying to see how they can partner with technology firms to make a win-win combination for the industry' (B1). This ensues a next proposition: Proposition 8: Partnerships between fintechs and financial institutions constitute a key capability mediating the relationship between the development and provision of sophisticated SCF schemes.
The final proposition considers further business opportunities. It involves the two outcomes 'increased supply chain transparency enhances the transformation in SCF' and 'technology affects the characteristics of SCF schemes'. As technologies form supply chain transparency, this opens new business opportunities by bundling the capability of supply chain transparency with further resources (Barney 1991). This is the case if it offers the chance to enrich the existing capabilities of a SCF provider. One of the statements in the interviews expressed a potential business opportunity in the field of SCF with the following statement about a fintech (P1): 'We get an approved invoice moments after getting the cargo receipt. And now we have something that is financeable if a supplier was looking for an approved invoice financing'. The interviewee refers to the necessary transparency in the transactions of a supply chain, which enables the financial institution to evaluate the correctness of an invoice. Accordingly, it needs to be investigated how supply chain transparency enhances further business opportunities in the field of SCF (Mishra et al. 2018). It allows, inter alia, to enter new market domains as reflected in the following statement by B1: 'Maersk started a supply chain finance company as they had the supply chain data and sufficient capital'. Hence, the impact of supply chain transparency on new business opportunities for SCF guides the following proposition: Proposition 9: The re-bundling of resources generates further business opportunities in the field of SCF for fintechs and financial institutions.

Conclusions
SCF presents a clear tension between theoretically sound -but scarcely observed -sophisticated schemes and practice, where reverse factoring remains the status quo. To address this dichotomy, we conducted interviews with relevant experts from the SCF industry, both fintechs and financial institutions. Focusing on the relation between supply chain transparency and SCF schemes, the paper applied the exploratory Gioia method for the analysis of the interviews. This led to identifying five outcomes, relating to the relationship between transparency, technology, and the provision of sophisticated SCF schemes, and the complexity of relationships between actors that do so. The interviews have been analysed under the theoretical lenses of TCE, AT and the dynamic capability approach of the RBV.
This allowed for a conclusion that transparency might have a mediating role between investments in technologies and the development of sophisticated SCF schemes. Parallelly, further outcomes related to the necessity of partnerships, often with the necessity of forming triadic and tetradic relationships.

Theoretical contributions
The paper summarises nine scientifically sound and pragmatically relevant research propositions across the three theoretical research streams. All theoretical approaches support the key construct of supply chain transparency to enhance the adoption and deployment of SCF schemes. The RBV states the necessity of bundling technology resources to enable sustainable competitive advantages for fintechs. It underlines the necessity of forming supply chain transparency as a key capability for sophisticated SCF schemes. TCE specifies a dependency of transparency towards the frequency of transactions. A high frequency comes along with a reduction in uncertainty, which thus allows a decrease in the cost of TGS governance and acts as an enabling factor for the implementation of SCF schemes. This is in line with the argumentation of AT, highlighting the reduction in agency costs with an increased supply chain transparency. In addition, within the view of the RBV and the AT, the interviews postulate that the implementation of sophisticated SCF schemes depend on partnerships, possibly involving complex tetradic relationships.

Managerial implications
From a managerial perspective, our contribution shows the practical relevance for SCF providers to investigate how upcoming technologies can support supply chain transparency and therewith foster the use of sophisticated SCF schemes. New business opportunities arise either by providing transparency or financing product flow that are enriched by increased information. It is therefore advisable for the management to test whether they already provide sufficient data to connect supply chain partners, as it is often the case for ERP system providers or for logistic service providers. In addition, it is necessary to test how and which of the upcoming technologies can be integrated into the IT-backbone of the company and evaluate the asset specific investments and their effect on supply chain transparency. Furthermore, the management of fintechs can test whether further SCF schemes are realisable by cooperating with financial institutions. Thereby, it is important to note that such cooperation will trigger a tetradic relationship configuration, thus increasing complexity and risk of goal misalignment. Moreover, the impact of the regulator's actions require attention when evaluating further business opportunities with sophisticated SCF schemes, even from a fintech perspective.

Limits of the research
The article is, of course, not without its limitations. The first, and arguably the most evident, lies in the fact that our interviews do not constitute a case study, but a collection of information from experts in the field. Although we believe that this is coherent with the objective and aim of the contribution, as well as with the methodology implemented, proper case studies will be required to further validate the identified propositions. A second limitation lies with the focus of the contribution on providers: although this provides us with a perspective often marginalised in SCF (e.g. Martin and Hofmann 2017), insights will have to be evaluated from the perspective of buyers and suppliers. Finally, a last clear limitation regards the choice of the theoretical lenses employed in this analysis. On one hand, the selection of the three theories was intended to cover the most relevant aspects of socio-economic exchange in SCF, though this choice is by no means to be intended as exhaustive, nor should choosing those theories be intended as a value judgment on their relevance. On the other hand, this contribution is not setup to provide a systematic overview of theories covering SCF (which has been done, for example, by Dekkers et al. 2020and Jia et al. 2020or Huang, Chan, and Chung 2022. We leave it as a direction for future research to extend this approach to additional lenses.

Future research
Several areas for future research emerge out of this paper. We recommend further research to start with evaluating propositions 1, 2, and 7 as they seem to be more likely to act as basic assumption for further developments in this field, and therefore are more in need for validation or falsification. Special focus should also be drawn on propositions 4, 5, 8 and 9, as they show promise to provide interesting managerial insights. For financial institutions, proposition 6 is of major importance. Empirical studies can substantiate our results in the context of the adoption of SCF schemes, i.e. to evaluate the relationship between the different agents in a supply chain and with external counterparts, like financial institutions and regulators. In addition, empirical studies can provide validation for the establishment of business opportunities in SCF via the generation of supply chain transparency. Future research can test furthermore other theories in the field of SCF and transparency, extending the content of our study to a broader set of lenses.
As a final thought, we share the vision provided by Dekkers et al. (2020, 13): more steps are needed in embedding theory in the emerging domain of SCF. This will render the abundant pragmatic insights streaming from this domain more generalisable, valid and resilient across time and, thus, more valuable for both academia and practice. This article is our contribution to this direction.

Note
1. To be intended as in 'before the invoice is approved by the buyer'.

Data availability statement
Due to the nature of this research, the participants of this study did not agree for their data to be shared publicly, so supporting data is not available. Revealing the full content of the interviews would compromise the privacy of the research participants.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Luca Mattia Gelsomino is an Assistant
Professor at the University of Groningen, a Senior Researcher at Windesheim University of Applied Sciences (both in the Netherlands) and the Academic Director of the SCF Community, an international foundation connecting universities that work on the field of SCF. In this role, he oversees the Community's research projects, international network and publication strategy. His research focuses on the integration of operations and supply chain management with finance, as well as studying application and adoption of emerging technologies across global supply chains. His teaching interests include purchasing, supply chain management, financial analysis and Supply Chain Finance. He holds a Ph.D. with merit from the School of Management of Politecnico di Milano (Italy), on the topic of measuring the financial performance of supply chains. While working for the School of Management, he directed the School's permanent research programme on Supply Chain Finance.
Saskia Sardesai is deputy head of the department Supply Chain Engineering at Fraunhofer-Institute for Material Flow and Logistics in Dortmund. In her additional function as Senior Scientist for SCM Research and Strategy, she leads and coordinates research projects with a strong international network. Her research area addresses topics of Supply Chain Management with a focus on digitalisation, technology triggered redesign, and resilience via supply chain transparency. She specialises in redesigns of rapidly adaptive logistics structures with emphasis on transparency generation within global supply chains. In this context, she conducted her Ph.D. thesis at the Technical University of Dortmund evaluating robustness and resilience of global supply chain networks. Next to her international research and consulting work at Fraunhofer, Saskia Sardesai gained international experience during her employment at Kuehne + Nagel where she worked for several years in the department of Contract Logistics in India.
Miia Pirttilä is a postdoctoral researcher at LUT University in Finland. Her research interest is working capital management in value chain that has led to the study of supply chain finance issues.