How the dimensions of culture influence supply chain collaboration: an explanatory sequential mixed-methods investigation.
| Autor | Acquah, Innocent Senyo Kwasi |
-
Introduction
Advances in information and communications technology (ICT), as well as globalization, have resulted in organizations becoming increasingly conscious of the fact that optimizing the performance of the whole supply chain, rather than individual organizations that constitute a supply chain, is the way to go. Uncertainty, as well as changing customer expectations, made it abundantly clear that no single individual organization has a monopoly over the efforts that lead to increased customer satisfaction. Supply chain collaboration is critical to performance advances that result in a sustained competitive advantage (Cao & Zhang, 2011). Superior supply chain collaboration, where members leverage the capabilities of suppliers and customers, is vital to survive and flourish in this competitive business climate (Fawcett, Fawcett, Watson & Magnan, 2012).
Cao & Zhang (2012) posit that collaboration in the supply chain denotes a situation where more than one independent firm teams up in planning as well as executing their supply chain activities. Fawcett, McCarter, Fawcett, Webb & Magnan (2015) note that collaboration entails not only the relationship amongst the members of the supply chain but also the sharing of resources that assist in responding adequately to customer requirements. As Verdecho, Alfaro-Saiz, Rodriguez-Rodriguez & Ortiz-Bas (2012) observe, collaborative partners gain significant advantages and benefits in the form of complementary resources, share the risk, reduce product development costs, thereby enhancing productivity and competitive advantage.
It is, therefore, a truism that managing the flows that exist in a supply chain would not be possible without working and robust supply chain relationships. Cao & Zhang (2012) note that collaboration as a supply chain strategy has one of the worst histories among the numerous supply strategies that firms ever introduced. For supply chains to realize the value of supply chain collaboration, further investigation is needed, even though it seems to have enormous potential (Cao & Zhang, 2012).
Prior research on the role of a collaborative culture in influencing supply chain collaboration suggests that a collaborative culture positively predicts supply chain collaboration (Cao & Zhang, 2012; Kumar, Banerjee, Meena & Ganguly, 2016; Lei, Le & Nguyen, 2017; Zhang & Cao, 2018). Further, a common theme that runs through the literature on collaborative culture and supply chain collaboration is the conceptualization of a collaborative culture construct as an all-embracing composite. These studies also tested only the construct-level structural models - thereby ignoring the nature of relationships between the dimensions of collaborative culture and supply chain collaboration. However, assessing these sub-construct-level relationships could help explore alternative models that make the findings more useful for decision-makers (Cao & Zhang, 2012).
More so, previous studies on collaborative culture and supply chain collaboration failed to sufficiently explain the contexts behind reported quantitative relationships (Cao & Zhang, 2012; Kumar etal, 2016; Lei etal, 2017; Nyaga, Whipple & Lynch, 2010; Piboonrungroj, 2012; Zhang & Cao, 2018; Acquah, Naude & Sendra-Garcia, 2021). Hence, there is a need to not only obtain quantitative results but to explain such results in more detail in terms of detailed respondent views and perspectives.
Furthermore, literature has no evidence on the use of mixed-methods design in assessing how a collaborative culture influences supply chain collaboration. These studies are mostly quantitative (Cao & Zhang, 2012; Kumar et al, 2016; Ralston, 2014; Seo, Dinwoodie & Roe, 2016) and focused primarily on whether collaborative culture predicts supply chain collaboration (Cao & Zhang, 2012). Adopting a purely quantitative research design does not give a comprehensive picture of how and why the dimensions of a collaborative culture influence supply chain collaboration. These strictly quantitative designs raise issues that pose validity risks relating to common method variance (CMV), which occurs when associations between constructs are exaggerated or subdued due to the method used to examine the constructs (Acquah et al, 2021; Schindler & Burkholder, 2016).
Consequently, and to help overcome the above-mentioned limitations of prior research, this study employs an explanatory mixed-methods design to investigate how and why the specific facets of collaborative culture (i.e. collectivism, long-tern orientation, power symmetry and uncertainty avoidance) influence supply chain collaboration in the downstream petroleum sector of an emerging economy. As a result, the study used mixedmethods research toexplore the following broad research question: How do the dimensions of collaborative culture influence supply chain collaboration?
This study makes a three-fold contribution to the literature; the first contribution stems from the use of an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design where qualitative results from the second phase are used to complement and explain the nuances behind the quantitative findings in the first phase. Secondly, this study brings the petroleum sector perspective to the debate on how the dimensions of collaborative culture influence supply chain collaboration (Acquah et al., 2021). Thirdly, this study brings an emerging economy perspective that augments the developed country-dominated literature on how collaborative culture influences supply chain collaboration.
The subsequent sections of this paper are structured as follows: we present the literature and hypotheses as well as methodology in Sections 2 and 3, respectively. In Section 4, we present the results, while Section 5 is dedicated to discussion and integration of the findings.
-
Literature, theoretical framework and hypothesis
2.1 Supply chain collaboration
Supply chain collaboration denotes the development of close longstanding relationships that enable members of a supply chain to work together and share resources, information, as well as risk in accomplishing common goals and objectives (Baah, Acquah & Ofori, 2021; Cao & Zhang, 2012; Ralston, Richey & Grawe, 2017). Moreover, collaboration is not only the catalyst behind effective and efficient management of the supply chain but the eventual core capability in a contemporary global economy and a path to sustained competitive advantage (Banchuen, Sadler & Shee, 2017; Al-Abdallah, Abdallah & Hamdan, 2014, p. 193). Supply chain collaboration is about how a firm purposefully collaborates with other members of its supply chain to enhance their ability to administer its internal as well as external operations to achieve effectiveness and efficiency in the movement of goods, services, information and decisions (Arvitrida, Robinson, Tako & Robertson, 2016; Baah et at., 2021).
2.2 Organizational culture
Organizational culture denotes the configuration of collective ideals and principles that aid individuals in comprehending the way organizations operate, which then serve as the basis for the norms for behaviour in the organization (Kumar et al., 2016). Alternatively, organizational culture is a collection of fundamental conventions established by the organization as it discerns how to cope with challenges within the organization besides variations in its external environment (Acquah et al., 2021; Van Dijk, 2016). Collaborative culture denotes relationship orientations where supply chains give critical attention to establishing as well as preserving long-term relationships, to the extent that organizational goals and objectives are revised in certain situations to safeguard the partnership (Lei et al., 2017). In other words, collaborative culture embodies the customs, principles and fundamental ideas of the firm about acceptable practices in the supply chain (Yilmaz, Cemberci & Uca, 2016). Four dimensions of collaborative culture, namely, collectivism, longterm orientation, power symmetry and uncertainty avoidance (Acquah et al., 2021), are considered for this study.
2.3 Theoretical framework and hypothesis development
In the resource-based theory (RBT), collaborative culture is explained as the embodiment of the customs, principles and fundamental ideas of the firm, which constitute rare and valuable resources to the entire supply chain (Yilmaz et al., 2016). Hence, collectivism, long-termorientation, power symmetry and uncertainty avoidance are adopted as the dimensions of collaborative culture. Since the RBT suggests a direct relationship between resources and supply chain performance (Acquah et al., 2021), it provides the basis to hypothesize a link between collaborative culture and supply chain collaboration. In line with the above discussions, a research framework in Figure 1 is proposed.
Since prior literature has been consistent on the direct relationship between collaborative culture and supply chain collaboration (Cao & Zhang, 2011; Kumar et al., 2016), it is postulated that the individual dimensions of collaborative culture would predict supply chain collaboration. Accordingly, directional hypotheses are deemed appropriate and hence formulated to examine these links as follows:
2.3.1 Collectivism and supply chain collaboration. Collectivism is the dimension of collaborative culture denoting the degree to which an organization embraces a collective rather than an individualistic consciousness when dealing with supply chain members (Kumar et al., 2016). Collectives treasure common characteristics and norms rather than individual goals and objectives, making collectivists more cooperative (Yilmaz et al., 2016). They emphasize communal and shared effort towards the collaboration (Seo et al., 2016). They adore working jointly and harmonizing each other's activities. Collectivism orientation signifies cooperation, teamwork, joint problem-solving and partnership amongst supply chain partners (Cao & Zhang...
Para continuar a ler
PEÇA SUA AVALIAÇÃOCOPYRIGHT GALE, Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.
