Vol.:(0123456789) Annals of Operations Research https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-019-03502-w 1 3 S.I.: INFORMATION- TRANSPARENT SUPPLY CHAINS Mediating role of cloud of things in improving performance of small and medium enterprises in the Indian context Vaibhav S. Narwane 1  · Rakesh D. Raut 2  · Sachin Kumar Mangla 3  · Bhaskar B. Gardas 4  · Balkrishna E. Narkhede 5  · Anjali Awasthi 6  · Pragati Priyadarshinee 7 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020 Abstract Integration of cloud computing and the Internet of things can infuence large as well as small- scale organizations in transforming their business systems for high performance. However, in developing nations like India, cloud of things is relatively novel, and there is a need for its proper understanding specifcally, in small and medium scaled enterprises. This study aims to investigate the mediating role of cloud of things on the performance of small and medium scaled enterprises and the infuence of various key factors namely security and privacy, per- ceived ease of use, top management support, perceived security risk, big data analytics, trust, customer–supplier intention, manufacturing infrastructure, IT support, knowledge sharing, and external environment support on cloud of things was analyzed. A sample of 290 responses from 96 Indian small and medium scaled enterprises was collected and exploratory fac- tor analysis, confrmatory factor analysis, structural equation modelling methodologies were employed for the analysis. Results suggest that big data analytics, top management support, trust, perceived security risk, etc. require the mediating support of cloud of things. This study is useful for managers, policymakers, practitioners, and regulatory authorities to understand the importance of information, and the cloud of things, and further to formulate strategies to improve frm’s performance by improving the information transparency across the value chain. Keywords Cloud computing · Information transparency · Supply chain management · Smart manufacturing · Small and medium enterprises 1 Introduction Currently, with Industry 4.0 becoming a key pillar, most of the companies are concerned about lagging in its adoption. Cloud computing (CC) and the internet of things (IoT) are an integral part of Industry 4.0 and Smart Factories (Kang et al. 2016). Characteristics of CC and IoT are complimentary regarding reachability, storage, computational capabilities and big data (Ahmadov and Helo 2018; Botta et al. 2016). In recent years, most of the * Sachin Kumar Mangla sachin.kumar@plymouth.ac.uk; sachinmangl@gmail.com Extended author information available on the last page of the article