Integrative Practices in Supply Chains: Building Relationships for Competitiveness in Dynamic Environments

Firms are increasingly relying on their supply-chain relationships to compete in an era of globalization and change. To this end firms integrate various processes and business activities with their supply chain partners. Supply chain integration (SCI) literature studies the performance benefits of such integration under different business conditions. Existing SCI research takes a black-box view of integration where different integrative practices are studied as one integration construct. This black-box view has limited applications because it masks the differences in SCI practices. In this dissertation we answer the following questions: what are the different elements that comprise the integration construct? What are the important differences between these elements in their relationships with performance and with environmental dynamism? We follow a rigorous and reproducible qualitative analysis procedure to identify the constructs that makeup the black-box of integration. We define the new elements of integration and generate measurement scales for them that are pre-tested using Q-sort. We then empirically verify our new conceptualization of integration by collecting survey data from manufacturers in North America. The survey results are analyzed using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis to yield reliable and valid measurement scales. The survey data is used to analyze the performance impact of the various integration elements. We find that basic communication elements are no longer order-winners and cannot be a source of increased profitability. We also find that operational excellence elements and knowledge generation elements both increase profits but only the knowledge generation elements are able to increase competitive advantage over rivals. These results provide an explanation for the inconsistent findings in the literature on the integration performance relationship. We also test how environmental dynamism impacts the relationships between the elements of integration and performance. Our results show that knowledge generation elements are more useful in highly dynamic conditions, while operational excellence elements are more useful in stable conditions. This dissertation makes significant contributions in providing conceptual synthesis and extension of theory as well as empirical verification of new insights. Our work is relevant to practitioners as it can assist them in making relationship level decisions regarding integration under various business conditions.