Content area
Full Text
1 Introduction
Over the past two decades, supply chain management (SCM), emphasizing the interdependence of buyer and supplier firms working collaboratively to improve the performance of the entire supply, has generated extensive interest in both academic and practitioner communities ([49] Shin et al. , 2000; [46] Narasimhan and Kim, 2007). In particular, with the increasing trend of business globalization, how a firm gains and retains its competitive advantage while facing domestic and international challenges has drawn a lot of attention ([34] Huo et al. , 2008; [38] Kannan and Tan, 2005). The effects of SCM on firm performance in manufacturing industries have also been extensively documented. SCM provides benefits to suppliers and customers by enhancing upstream and downstream linkages. Additionally, firms have began to integrate their external customer-firm-supplier relationships and internal contextual factors as a means to improve customer satisfaction, firm performance, and firm competitiveness. However, research examining the interaction among customer-firm-supplier integration, firm contextual factors, and firm performance has been limited.
SCM has been recognized as an important issue and has generated a substantial amount of interest among managers and researchers. Since the 1980s, SCM has been regarded as one of the most effective ways for firms to improve their competitive advantage. SCM has been documented to be positively associated with enhanced competitiveness and improved firm performance ([44] Li et al. , 2006). In addition, SCM has been widely considered to be an effective management tool for firms to maintain business stability, growth, and prosperity. Supporting this claim, [27] Harrison and New (2002) report that:
While 70 percent of the respondents thought that their supply chain strategy was currently important or very important in achieving competitive advantage, in the future 91 percent thought that this would be the case.
[27] Harrison and New (2002) also found that leading players in SCM:
[...] regard their supply chains as key elements in their corporate strategy and perceive them to be very important for competitive advantage, both now and in the future. They have already invested significantly in supply chain infrastructure [...] and expect to continue investing at a relatively high level into the future.
SCM entails closer coordination and configuration of the business process between suppliers and customers in order to make products available in an...