Aligning competitive priorities in the supply chain: the role of interactions with suppliers
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Purpose Over the last decade, competition in the manufacturing sector has increased as globalization and customer requirements have evolved. Now, organizations are competing not only with their internal capabilities but also on their abilities to leverage capabilities in the supply chain. Recent studies suggest that strategic alignment in the supply chain, assessed by the degree of matching between supply management and market requirements, is critical for the success of organizations in the global marketplace. The purpose of this paper is to examine the possible linkage between strategic alignment (or lack of) in the supply chain, based on the traditional competitive priorities (i.e. cost, quality, flexibility and delivery), and the type of interactions with suppliers. Design/methodology/approach Strategic alignment in the supply chain was measured by the difference between customer's requirements and the emphasis that the organization puts on these same requirements in dealing with its suppliers. The types of interactions were assessed by six items, three of them to measure the degree of arm's length practices and the other three to assess the degree of cooperation with suppliers. The empirical analysis used data from 512 manufacturing companies in Canada surveyed in 2003 and 2005. Linear regressions were conducted to test a series of four hypotheses linking alignment in the supply chain and the type of interactions with suppliers. Findings Interactions with suppliers that are increasingly based on cooperation were found to be linked with a better alignment of competitive priorities that are characteristic of responsive supply chains. An unexpected result was the positive link between arm's length interactions and delivery, a dimension that is also associated with responsive supply chains. Research limitations/implications The choice of interactions with suppliers can be critical in the alignment of competitive priorities in the supply chain. A limitation is that the empirical analysis rests on data collected from one respondent per organization. Originality/value This paper contributes to research by providing empirical evidence of the link between the type of interactions with suppliers and the alignment of competitive priorities in the supply chain.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.027 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".