Cultural traits, infrastructure and feedback mechanisms as barriers to supply chain management in Brazil

Abstract

The supply chain management (SCM) practices have been consolidated as important tools for increasing productivity and, consequently, business competitiveness. This study shows that peculiar aspects of culture and infrastructure in Brazil become barriers to collaboration and integration, which helps to justify the country's difficulty in inserting its companies into global supply chains. Based on the content analysis of interviews with prominent SCM executives in the country, this work formulates a SCM model contextualized to the Brazilian reality covering three cultural traits and three infrastructural traits. Fourteen propositions offer a fine-grained analysis of feedback mechanisms between said traits that perpetuate the gap between SCM theory and the Brazilian practice, hindering the advancement of SCM in Brazil. The model offers a guide for companies that aim to unclog the bottlenecks to allow the country's participation in the complex 'dance' of the global SCM.