Best practice exemplars suggest that digital platforms play a critical role in managing supply chain activities and partnerships that generate performance gains for firms. However, there is limited academic investigation on how and why information technology can create performance gains for firms in a supply chain management (SCM) context. Grant's (1996) theoretical notion of higher-order capabilities and a hierarchy of capabilities has been used in recent information systems research by Barua et al. (2004), Sambamurthy et al. (2003), and Mithas et al. (2004) to reframe the conversation from the direct performance impacts of IT resources and investments to how and why IT shapes higher-order process capabilities that create performance gains for firms. We draw on the emerging IT-enabled organizational capabilities perspective to suggest that firms that develop IT infrastructure integration for SCM and leverage it to create a higher-order supply chain integration capability generate significant and sustainable performance gains. A research model is developed to investigate the hierarchy of IT-related capabilities and their impact on firm performance. Data were collected from 110 supply chain and logistics managers in manufacturing and retail organizations. Our results suggest that integrated IT infrastructures enable firms to develop the higher-order capability of supply chain process integration. This capability enables firms to unbundle information flows from physical flows, and to share information with their supply chain partners to create information-based approaches for superior demand planning, for the staging and movement of physical products, and for streamlining voluminous and complex financial work processes. Furthermore, IT-enabled supply chain integration capability results in significant and sustained firm performance gains, especially in operational excellence and revenue growth. Managerial initiatives should be directed at developing an integrated IT infrastructure and leveraging it to create process capabilities for the integration of resource flows between a firm and its supply chain partners.

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Firm performance impacts of digitally enabled supply chain integration capabilities

In recent years the issue of supply chain risk has been pushed to the fore, initially by fears related to possible disruptions from the much publicised “millennium bug”. Y2K passed seemingly without incident, though the widespread disruptions caused by fuel protests and then Foot and Mouth Disease in the UK, and by terrorist attacks on the USA have underlined the vulnerability of modern supply chains. Despite increasing awareness among practitioners, the concepts of supply chain vulnerability and its managerial counterpart supply chain risk management are still in their infancy. This paper seeks to identify an agenda for future research and to that end the authors go on to clarify the concept of supply chain risk management and to provide a working definition. The existing literature on supply chain vulnerability and risk management is reviewed and compared with findings from exploratory interviews undertaken to discover practitioners' perceptions of supply chain risk and current supply chain risk managem...

/pdf/supply-chain-risk-management-outlining-an-agenda-for-future-72x1bn9ujn.pdf

Supply chain risk management: outlining an agenda for future research

https://www.icesi.edu.co/blogs/semillerosi3/files/2013/12/3-SUPPLY-CHAIN-MANAGEMENT-A-ANALYTICAL-FRAMEWORK-FOR-CRITICAL-LITERATURE-REVIEW.pdf

Supply chain management: an analytical framework for critical literature review

– This paper seeks to understand business requirements for supply chain risk management (SCRM) from a practitioner perspective., – Based on the findings from an exploratory quantitative survey and qualitative focus group discussions with supply chain managers, some issues of SCRM are derived and structured along the three conceptual levels of “philosophy”, “principles” and “processes”., – The survey showed that 44 per cent of all eight responding companies expect the vulnerability of their supply chains to increase in the next five years. However, the concept of SCRM is still in its infancy., – The paper contributes to our knowledge on SCRM by presenting the business requirements from a practitioner perspective and by deriving a structure for an integrated approach to SCRM which can guide further research.

Supply chain risk management: Understanding the business requirements from a practitioner perspective

http://ebc.ie.nthu.edu.tw/km/MI/hou/LM_Reference/P07.pdf

A framework of supply chain management literature

Intense global competition has created a highly demanding customer. To serve his needs for highvariety, low cost, sound quality and easy availability, organisations are looking beyond their own boundaries to the management of their supply chains. In this they have been inspired by the typical Far Eastern, and the very best Western, practice. But supply chain management is still a hope not a reality for many companies. On the one hand there is an array of “panaceas” on offer for our “sick” businesses; new technology, computer integrated manufacturing, the Just-in-Time approach, total quality management, and more besides. On the other hand supply chain management has few specific tools of its own. To the manager busy holding on to his market share it is difficult to see where to start the process of making his operation more competitive. A three-stage approach to help companies see just which actions are likely to get the supply chain into better competitive shape is proposed. Also introduced are two simple graphical tools to help management develop a strategy for enhanced supply chain effectiveness: the pipeline map and the supplier relationship grid.

Charles Scott

Papers

New Strategic Tools for Supply Chain Management