SUMMARY Despite well‐documented evidence of significant competitive advantage and cost reduction resulting from supply chain management (SCM) practices, the healthcare industry has been extremely slow to embrace these practices. This article, through literature review and case studies within the healthcare industry supply chain, explores the barriers to implementation of SCM practices. These barriers include: lack of executive support; misaligned or conflicting incentives; need for data collection and performance measurement; limited education on supply chain; and inconsistent relationships with group purchasing organizations and other supply chain partners. Practical recommendations are made for hospitals and supply chain partners struggling to implement workable SCM solutions.

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This research derives a numerical taxonomy that classifies manufacturers with similar combinations of supply chain (SC) capabilities into three SC Strategy Groups. This research also explores the relationship between the SC Strategy Groups and contextual factors, competitive priorities and firm performance. There are significant differences among the SC Strategy Groups for the location of the firm, the level of uncertainty, the competitiveness of the market and firm performance. Surprisingly, there is no relationship between the SC Strategy Groups and a firm's competitive priorities, indicating that firms are often not linking their SC strategy to their competitive strategy.

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This paper presents a conceptual framework that hypothesizes the nature of the relationships between a firm's use of Internet-based information technology (IT), supply chain planning capability, and operational performance. Using data from 266 manufacturing sites and structural equation modeling, we show that the impact of IT on operational performance is contingent upon the intent of its use. Specifically, our results suggest that IT's use in exploiting existing opportunities has both a direct effect and an indirect effect, mediated through supply chain planning capabilities, on operational performance. In contrast, when IT is used to explore new opportunities, it has neither a direct nor an indirect effect on operational performance. Implications of these research findings are reported.