Supplier–Customer Digital Orientation Fit and Supplier Performance: Distinguishing Intensity Fit from Strategic Intent Fit

Digital transformation has become a central strategic priority for firms, with its value creation increasingly extending beyond organizational boundaries through shared information systems, data exchange, and coordinated supply chain processes. This growing interdependence creates a strategic coordination problem because suppliers and customers may differ both in the emphasis they place on digital transformation and in the strategic objectives they pursue. Existing research provides limited understanding of how alignment in these two attributes is associated with supplier performance. We therefore distinguish digital orientation intensity fit from digital orientation strategic intent fit and examine their associations with supplier performance and the moderating role of supplier degree centrality. Using matched supplier–customer data for Chinese listed firms from 2001 to 2023, we find that digital orientation intensity fit is negatively associated with supplier performance, whereas digital orientation strategic intent fit exhibits an inverted U-shaped relationship with supplier performance. Supplier degree centrality weakens the negative relationship between intensity fit and supplier performance and steepens the inverted U-shaped relationship between strategic intent fit and supplier performance. This study contributes to the literature on digital orientation and strategic fit by adopting a supplier–customer dyadic perspective, distinguishing the performance implications of two forms of digital orientation fit, and identifying supplier network position as an important boundary condition. The findings also provide practical guidance for suppliers in managing digital collaboration with customers according to the form of alignment and their network position.