Research On The Effect Of Supply Chain Agility On Firm's Operational Performance

Agility is a challenging and critical factor for all business operations.Embedding agility to supply chain process is very important to organizations because today's organizations need to satisfy customer's requirements in an effective and rapidly manner.Several researchers have argued that agility has become a prime driver of competitiveness.Agility concerning to supply chain has not been well studied;especially less attention has been paid to empirical work from developing nations like Iran.This study fulfills such a need by investigating the relationship between supply chain agility and organizational performance in the context of Iran.Primary data was collected through surveys distribution among 500 supply chain managers in Iranian SMEs between November 2016 and March 2017.Subsequently,hypotheses were tested through structural equation modeling using SPSS and AMOS integration.The findings revealed the positive relationships among all dimensions of the SC agility(e.g.,alertness,decisiveness,flexibility,accessibility,and swiftness)and operational performance.This study ensures that operational performance of the organizations might be improved by focusing on SC agility in today's competitive environment.Our research proposes managerial implications and suggests future directions.Five core factors of supply chain agility(FSCA)were studied to examine the relationship with supply chain performance whereas diverse experts have affirmed the connections of such FSCA in various directions and performances of the firms.However,scholars claimed that yet there is a need to work more in such direction to analyze mufti-directional findings.We currently worked on some FSCA of supply chain(SC)to affirm the linkage on supply chain performance(SCP)to realize the impact of FSCA and SCP.Two factors of FSCA such as alertness(FASC)and Swiftness(FAWC)have been applied to affirm such connections towards SCP.A total of 200 surveys were circulated among managers of SMEs in Iran and thereafter were examined by means of equation techniques(SEM).After calculations,we found that FASC has positive connection with SCP and likewise connection of FAWC is also observed as positive toward SCP performance,respectively.Hence,this paper affirmed that both factors of FSCA,i.e.,FASC and FAWC have positive association with SCP in the domain of Iran.Therefore,the supply chain management should more emphasize on FSCA,particularly on FASC and FAWC since such factors are observed with positive connection to SCP.We have provided numerous implications and directions for supply chain managers to work and conduct in-depth researches in future.The personality of supply chain managers was examined with respect to supply chain performance on how a personality may affect supply chain performance.Since supply chain management(SCM)is a growing field where supply chain managers play an important role in the field of SCM.In this research,five factor model(FFM),e.g.,extroversion(EPT),emotional stability(ESPT),agreeableness(APT),openness to experience(OPT),and conscientiousness(CPT)were assumed as the factors of Supply Chain Performance(SCP).Data were gathered from 150 supply chain managers(SCMG)and analysis assured that FFM has positive correlation with SCP in the Iranian SMEs.We also observed that some factor of FFM which are APT and OPT are closely associated to SCP whereas three factors of FFM,e.g.,ESPT,CPT,and EPT has less positive correlation to SCP on present instant.This affirmed the higher positive connections of two factors of FFM,i.e.,APT and OPT relatively than ESPT,CPT,and EPT,respectively.This research proposed certain implications and future research for future researchers.This study proposes applications for respective management.Undoubtedly,organizations determinedly strive to obtain competitive advantages where researchers have been claimed that supply chain agility is core capability to achieve such advantages in the present customer-oriented and competitive environment.Owing to numerous uncertainties of customer demand,global competition,political pressures,and rest of truculence organizations face challenges to succeed over the customers.Firms face a range of issues in their supply chain to meet the demand of customers.In such competitive situation,the concept of agility in supply chain has a remarkable significance where organizations must respond during different levels of customer demand by integrating agility in supply chain operations.Second,the agility in supply chain might be assessed emphasizing on each dimension of SC agility,i.e.,alertness,accessibility,decisiveness,swiftness,and flexibility).Our results have implications for the literature of supply chain performance(SCP)and FFM where previous studies have identified the effect by adoption of some FFM dimensions and in different context with different measurement construct.But,replications of this research,intends to provide additional evidence to reveal relationship by implementing all FFM along with targeting higher numbers of supply chain managers(SCMG)of Iran.For supply chain and trait researchers,this research provides a clear understanding and linkage between FFM(five factors model)and SCP from Iranian context.Our study also suggests certain managerial implication by suggesting SCMG mangers to recruit potential candidates by understanding personalities to take decision of recruitment.For management,it is necessary to identify certain scales to select effective SC management in order to gain better outcome.This research clearly categorized that APT and OPT personality traits have major influence on SCP and then consecutively ESPT,CPT,and OPT,respectively.This study has certain limitations,which would be considered in future work.The sample size is limited that restrict its generalizations.This study is limited to Iranian SMEs,which again limits its generalizability.The study is limited from business-to-consumer perspective.Likewise,this study failed to examine the role of any moderating factor between SC agility and operational performance of the organizations.On the other side,this paper has limitations related to sampling,generalization limitations,and location limitations.The large number of supply chain managers could be targeted to get response in the future in order to provide more evidences by ensuring the essential of the FASC with respect to SCP.Moreover,generalization of the research is vigorously important where future research related to agility and rest of FASC may expand the boundary of literature and scope.This study worked particularly on pharmaceutical and electronic sectors of the Iran though in future scholars could gather data from other cities and sectors within Iran and other countries apart from Iran in order to additionally contribute in the literature of supply chain agility and SCM.Finally,this paper only employed two factors of FSCA such as FASC and FAWC where researchers may adopt other agility dimensions to provide and introduce more effective elements,which may improve SC efficiency of the firms.