Supply Chain Management Practices And Performance Of Cement Companies In Ethiopia

SCM deals with long term strategic alliance,supplier buyer partnership,cross-organizational logistics management,joint planning,inventory control and information sharing.This research sought to investigate supply chain management practices and organizational performance among cement companies in Ethiopia.This research adopts a cross-sectional design and guided by the following objective:to establish the relationship between supply chain management practices and performance of cement companies in Ethiopia.Primary data was collected using a semi-structured questionnaire and secondary data was obtained from the annual financial reports of the respective companies.A 5-point scale was used to measure the output of each item answered by the respondent.Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the variables numerically.Using Minitab 17 Software,a multivariate regression model was used to analyze the relationship between supply chain management and organizational performance among cement companies in Ethiopia.According to the regression outcome the supply chain management practices have had a significant influence on the organizational performance of cement companies during the study period.The outcome of the study establishes a near perfect positive relationship between supply chain management practices and the organizational performance of the cement firms.The regression analysis yielding coefficient of multiple determination(R~2)of 0.785 implying that 78.5%of the variation in the organizational performance of the cement company in Ethiopia can attributed to supply chain management practices they have adopted over time.The p-value of0.001 shows that,there impact of supply chain management practices on the organizational performance of the cement company in Ethiopia is significant at the 95%confidence level.But according to the study 37.5%of the cement companies in Ethiopia doesn't have a supply chain management framework.Because of this the study further recommends that the cement companies in Ethiopia foster collaborative private and public research designing the scope and functionality of a supply chain management framework specifically tailored to macro-environment of the country.According to the study,research efforts involving confirmatory factor analysis need to be carried out to studies can be conducted to test and confirm the factor loadings in different industrial companies to establish the validity and strength of the model.