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Abstract
Purpose - Information technology (IT) is increasingly being used towards the effectiveness of supply chains. There are, however, some barriers in this process. These barriers influence one another and also adversely affect the IT-enablement of a supply chain. The aim of this paper is to understand these mutual influences so that those barriers which are at the root of few more barriers (called driving barriers) and those which are most influenced by the others (called dependent barriers) are identified.
Design/methodology/approach - A questionnaire-based survey was conducted to rank the barriers.
Findings - The results of the survey and the interpretive structural modeling (ISM) methodology have been used to evolve the mutual relationships among these barriers.
Originality/value - It is observed that there are some barriers, which have both high driving power and dependency and therefore need more attention.
Keywords Supply chain management, Surveys, Communication technology
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
During the past two decades, supply chain management has received increased attention among the industries for achieving competitive advantage. A basic enabler for effective supply chain management is information sharing among link partners. This has been greatly facilitated by the recent advances in IT (Freeman, 1998; Lee and Whang, 2000). However, the deployment of IT tools in a supply chain is not free from barriers. Some of these barriers are lack of funds, disparity in trading partners capability, lack of trust, fear of information system breakdown etc (Kwan, 1999; Kadambi, 2000; Ayers, 2001; Zhao and Xie, 2002; Li, 2002; Agarwal and Shankar, 2003). These barriers not only affect the process of IT-enablement but also influence one another. It is, therefore, important to understand their mutual relationship so that those barriers that are at the root of some more barriers (called driving barriers) and those which are most influenced by the others (called driven barriers) are identified. After this, it is prudent for the management to accord appropriate attention to tackle these barriers.
Interpretive structural modeling (ISM) is a well-established methodology for identifying relationships among specific items, which define a problem or an issue (Warneld, 1974; Sage, 1977). Therefore, in this research, these barriers have been analyzed using the ISM approach, which shows the interrelationships of the barriers, and their driving power and dependence.