Abstract:
One of the most significant changes in the paradigm of modern business management is that individual businesses no longer compete as solely autonomous entities, but rather as supply chains. In this emerging competitive environment, the ultimate success of the business will depend on management’s ability to integrate the company’s intricate network of business relationships. Effective supply chain management (SCM) has become a potentially valuable way of securing competitive advantage and improving organisational performance since competition is no longer between organisations, but among supply chains, which can be obtained through the sharing of appropriate information between supply chain partners and forming healthy inter-organisational relationships.
The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of supply chain dynamism, information sharing and inter-organisational relationships on supply chain performance in manufacturing, service and mining in the Gauteng Province of South Africa. Data for the study were collected from 350 prominent organisations and the relationships proposed in the framework were tested using different statistical techniques. The results indicate that supply chain dynamism have a positive influence on both information sharing and inter-organisational relationships. They also indicate that higher levels of information sharing can lead to enhanced competitive advantage and improved supply chain performance, which further indicate that the more organisations have healthy inter-organisational relationships, the better the supply chain performance becomes. These results have value to both the academic and business worlds as they provide verification of the widely held belief of the value of effective supply chain management and performance.
