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Supply chain strategies and practices: An exploratory study

Posted on:2007-01-24Degree:Ph.DType:Dissertation
University:The Chinese University of Hong Kong (Hong Kong)Candidate:Qi, YinanFull Text:PDF
GTID:1459390005488516Subject:Business Administration
Abstract/Summary:
Supply chain management has become one of the most popular approaches to enhance the global competitiveness of business corporations today. Thus, it has received more and more attention from practitioners and the academia. However, how to effectively manage the flow of materials from supply sources to the ultimate customer represents a major challenge for today's managers. From the viewpoint of business competition, Porter (1980) identified three general types of strategies, i.e., overall cost leadership, differentiation, and focus. This research tries to make an extension of this typology from an angle of supply chain management. Two general supply chain strategies including leanness and agility are identified in this study.;This research is composed of three studies. Study 1 makes a contribution to investigate the moderating effect of environmental uncertainty on the relationship between competitive strategy and supply chain strategy, and between supply chain strategy and financial performance. The findings prove that environmental uncertainty works as a homologizer in the proposed framework. Using multiple group structural equation analysis, the different strengths of the impact of competitive strategy on supply chain strategy and that of supply chain strategy on financial performance are identified. Study 2 tests the validity of the matrix proposed by Fisher (1997) and Christopher (2000) in which the relationship between product characteristics and supply chain structure is proposed. The findings show that the functional product needs a higher level of the use of the lean supply chain, while innovative products need a higher level of the use of the agile or leagile supply chain. The regression results demonstrate that the match between product characteristics and supply chain strategy indeed lead to higher performance. Finally, study 3 identifies several supply chain management practices through a thorough literature review of about 300 academic papers and classifies them into eight bundles. Based on Ferdows and De Meyer (1990)'s cumulative model, we propose that lean manufacturers should focus on such practices that help them build lean capabilities, and agile manufacturers need to build lean capabilities first before pursuing agility.;Keywords. Competitive strategy, Supply chain strategy, Leanness, Agility, Environmental uncertainty, Moderator, Cumulative model.
Keywords/Search Tags:Supply chain, Management, Business, Environmental uncertainty, Cumulative model, Practices, Build lean capabilities
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