The Impact Of Supply Chain Management Dimensions On Agribusiness Firms Performance In Ghana

The cornerstone of the economic progress of any nation is the judicious development and utilisation of its natural resources.Ghana stands on the threshold of abundantly rich but largely underutilized agricultural natural resources.As an agrarian economy,agribusiness and agriculture perform an essential function in Ghana‘s economy and have a great impact on rural development,especially to poverty reduction,culture values formation,social stabilization,environmental sustainability and buffering economic stock.The agricultural sector provides employment for approximately 50-55 percent of the labour force and the majority of the commodities from the farms are produced in abundance and left to rot due to the lack of available markets,storage facilities,accessible roads and transportation or exported to global markets in its natural form.Experts and scholars maintain that the best way of transforming the phase of the agricultural sector is to revolutionize agribusiness from traditional individual firm-based management to integrated management across the supply chain network,even though,agribusiness in Ghana is in its evolving level.Studies have proved that the management of supply chains play a major role in strengthening the productivity level,thus translates to improve performance of firms in unstable business environment.Although supply chain management has provided competitive advantage to firms operating in a broad span of industries,it has not yet fulfilled its utmost potential in the agricultural and agribusiness sector of Ghana.In concord with the focus of improving the competitiveness and profitability of agribusiness and agriculture,the government of Ghana has enhanced access to improved technological packages for increased productivity and to ensure sustainable management of the environment,and yet the performance of agribusiness continues to declining.This menace in performance is a result of poor supply chain management strategy to increase agribusiness and agricultural productivity.In the past research in this area,dimensions such as supply chain management practices(leadership,stakeholders‘ commitment,management and strategic planning,and continuous improvement and innovation),supply chain integration practices(internal integration,supplier integration,customer integration)and strategic supply chain orientation(top management support,technological orientation,entrepreneurial orientation and market orientation)are postulated to play the key function in the management of supply chains.Therefore,the present study intends to examine and provide evidence of how supply chain management dimensions(supply chain management practices,supply chain integration practices,and strategic supply chain orientation)can enhance agribusiness firms‘ performance in Ghana.The conceptual framework of the study was developed on the basis of four present theories: resource dependency theory(RDT),the resource-based view(RBV),dynamic capability theory(DCT)and knowledge-based view(KBV).The conceptual framework incorporates all the individual frameworks in each study,which is aligned to the objectives of the study and illustrated to portray the correlation between the independents,mediators,moderators,and dependent variables.Stratified random sampling was utilized.The unit of analysis for the study was sixty-four agribusiness firms from six selected regions in Ghana(Northern,Ashanti,Brong Ahafo,Eastern,Greater Accra,and Western regions)with an estimated target population of 800 top,middle and supervising managers.Both primary and secondary data were employed.The study made use of survey questionnaires to gather primary data.Secondary data was collected through extensive literature review of Journal articles,annual reports from Ghana statistical service,Ministry of Food and Agriculture(MOFA)and Ghana Chamber of Agribusiness(GCA).The study used structural equation modeling analysis to authenticate the relationships between the variables in the framework that provided a suitable match to the study data.To fulfill the research objectives,the study examined the mediating role of supply chain integration in the nexus between supply chain management practices and agribusiness firms performance.Second,the intervening role of information sharing in the connection between supply chain integration practices and internal process performance.Lastly,the moderating influence of knowledge transfer on the relationship between strategic supply chain orientation and agribusiness firms‘ performance.The findings produced by this study will help improve the smooth operations of agribusiness in Ghana and will therefore profit the input suppliers,producers,wholesalers,processors,retailers,exporters and importers serving in the agribusiness firms value chain.First,the study findings revealed that supply chain management practices positively and significantly influence agribusiness firms‘ performance(internal process and financial performance).Also,supply chain integration positively mediates the relationship between supply chain management practices and agribusiness firms‘ performance(internal process and financial performance).Second,the results of the study showed that supply chain integration practices(internal integration and customer integration)significantly and positively influence information sharing,and information sharing was found to positively and significantly mediate the relationship between internal integration,customer integration and internal process performance of agribusiness firms.However,supplier integration was found to have no significant impact on information sharing;information sharing does not significantly mediate the relationship between supplier integration and internal process performance of agribusiness firms in Ghana,instead supplier integration has a direct impact with internal process performance.Thirdly,the results disclosed that strategic supply chain orientation(top management support,technological orientation,entrepreneurial orientation and market orientation)has a positive and significant impact on agribusiness firm‘s performance.Further,the results also showed that knowledge transfer positively and significantly moderates the relationship between strategic supply chain orientation and agribusiness firm‘s performance.This doctoral thesis contributes to knowledge and supply chain management literature in a number of ways.First,this study introduces and highlights the importance of supply chain integration in agribusiness sector.More specifically,it outlines how agribusiness firms can embrace and direct their resources in achieving supply chain integration as a core value in ensuring efficiency and efficacy in meeting performance goals.Second,unlike previous studies in developing economies that explore supply chain integration practices as a whole on firms‘ or organizational performance,this thesis delved into the multi-dimensional aspect of supply chain integration practices on agribusiness firms‘ performance.Further,this study documents a new finding that more investment in resources should be geared toward the internal and customer integrations since collaborative works between the functional units are necessary in facilitating the information obtained from external partners in the supply chain.These set a solid foundation for improved internal process performance.Further,information sharing internally as well as with customers and suppliers will allow agribusiness firms in Ghana to mitigate risk and improve product development and challenges related to supply chains.Lastly,this study looked at the multi-dimensional attribute of strategic supply chain orientation on the performance of agribusiness firms.The study established a new finding that agribusiness firms in Ghana should strengthen their strategic supply chain orientation posture through top management support,technological orientation,entrepreneurial orientation and market orientation,since such a unique set of resources possessed by firms and difficult to copy would boost the competitiveness as well as reinforce the performance of agribusiness firms in Ghana.Knowledge transfer among agribusiness firms supply chain will ignite the level of innovation and accelerate the development of new products.Thus,investment into intensification of knowledge transfer would reinforce the absorptive capacity of agribusiness firms in the supply chain.The future study direction of this dissertation is to explore the impact of various types of information sharing on the performance of agribusiness firms and broaden the scope of the study to include all agribusiness firms in the rest of the regions in Ghana.Second,future studies will examine the relationship between farmer cooperatives and supply chain firms.Overall,this research study unlocks the untapped agricultural supply chain management dimensions,through which agribusiness firms and agricultural sector of Ghana can be helped improve productivity and enhance the system efficiency of supply chains.