| dc.description.abstract | This thesis set out to establish the role of technology in the relationship between supply chain strategies and overall firm performance by addressing four primary gaps in the literature: the study of the four variables (supply chain strategies, supply chain technology, supply chain performance and firm performance) in isolation; the research findings and results have been contradicting and no attempt to clear the contradictions; biased and unbalanced analysis of the different measures of firm performance, as well as the failure to use weighted scores to measure firm performance; the limited and still evolving literature on supply chain strategies; and the narrow literature on supply chain technology was largely focused on the adoptions, but not on the moderating effect on the relationship between supply chain strategies and firm performance. With a firm level focus, the study employed Resource Based View framework. To accomplish the four objectives of this study, four major and twelve sub hypotheses were developed and tested. A sample of one hundred and thirty eight (138) firms was drawn using proportionate sampling from a total population of six hundred and twenty seven (627) large scale manufacturing firms in Kenya. The descriptive statistics, reliability and validity tests of the constructs: correlation, factor and regression analysis models were used to test the hypotheses. The preliminary tests employed the use of Kaiser Mayer-Olkim (KMO) and Barlett’s test.
The findings indicate that there is a significant relationship between supply chain strategy and the firm’s SC performance, where SC strategies alone are able to explain 51.3% of the variance in the firm’s supply chain performance. Equally, there is a very strong relationship between supply chain strategies, SC technology and firm supply chain performance outcome with the supply chain strategies and technology explaining 92.9% of the changes in the firm’s SC performance outcome. This implies that when SC strategies are combined with the supply chain technologies they explain 92.9% of the variations in the firm’s supply chain performance. From the results, SC technologies have a greater impact of 42.6% (92.9 -51.3) on the relationship between SC strategies and SC performance than that of 11.5% (88.2 – 76.7) on the relationship between SC strategies and firm performance; since these are basically SC technologies in support of the supply chain and not the firm’s wider functional areas. At the end, the coefficient of the product variable show a very strong moderating effect of SC technologies on the relationship between supply chain strategies and supply chain performance (SC Strategy*Technology beta = 0.925) compared to that on the relationship between supply chain strategies and firm performance (SC Strategy*Technology beta = 0.532).
In theory, policy and practice, the study cleared contradictions thus supporting the position that firms ought to invest in supply chain configurations that lead to improved service delivery and enhanced performance. Managers should recognize the need of long range supply chain strategies aligned with overall business strategy to improve overall firm performance than running the supply chain operations as Mid-range activities. A qualitative research design with more variables could be considered for further research. | en |
