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Service triads refer to tripartite relationships in which client firms serve their customers through third-party service providers. The purpose of this paper is to systematically review the nascent but fast-growing literature on service triads to explore the broad themes along which the literature has grown, and to identify the gaps and future research opportunities.

Systematic literature review (SLR) approach is adopted to retrieve, select, and synthesise relevant service triads studies. A citation network analysis on the corpus resulting from the SLR identified the core articles of the literature.

The SLR uncovered ten themes of research along the articles’ objectives, theories and methodologies. The classification framework of service triads, the roles of customers and providers, the size of the provider, triadic risks, controlling service delivery and service quality, regulated triads, the stability of the triads, and cross-country, cross-culture triads emerged as significant under-researched areas.

The paper illustrates research trends and provides insights into the neglected and under-researched problems of service triads. This is the first SLR on service triads.

Due to emerging uncertainties, supply chain planning (SCP) has become complex for many companies, and practitioners are unsure how emerging technologies can help. We address this gap by identifying pathways of how digital technologies may aid planned flexibility in SCP.

The research builds on engaged scholarship and co-creation of knowledge. Eight senior managers from two companies participated in three rounds of workshops with us discussing and contrasting their planning challenges and potential solutions using examples of industry 4.0 applications drawn from the literature.

Based on a novel framework for digital transition in SCP, this research shows how emerging technologies may aid SCP in building resilience to emergent uncertainties and open new research avenues through four impact pathways.

The SCP literature is ruefully short on studies that address technology-aided SC resilience. The research explains why this calls for a paradigm shift in SCP research.

This research argues that resilience-building SCP requires planned flexibility and presents a digital transition framework that allows for it.