Supply chain configurations in a global environment: A longitudinal perspective

Abstract

In the last few years, companies have paid growing attention to the management of their supply chain at a global level. The need for better suppliers, international competition and research of specific competences have forced companies to improve their ability to cope with suppliers and customers located in different countries around the world. This paper aims to provide an overview of how manufacturing companies use global supply chains and how their behaviour changes over time. Longitudinal data from a sample of companies from the last two editions of the International Manufacturing Strategy Survey (IMSS) are used. A contingent analysis of manufacturing localization and globalization is also considered in order to identify factors influencing supply chain globalization strategies.

How do different supply chain configuration settings impact on performance trade-offs?

“…The most interesting finding concerns the examination of different industry settings, since this implies different features of supply chains. Cagliano et al (2008) define the trends of global and local supply chains with respect to sourcing and distribution using data collected from the fourth edition of the International Manufacturing Strategy Survey, which facilitates the addition of a longitudinal dimension to their study. The paper's findings highlight the importance and spreading of globalisation and identify four clusters of global supply chain trends (local supply chain, global seller, global purchaser and global supply chain).…”

“…The configuration is studied in four distinctive industrial sectors: the food industry (e.g., Reiner and Trcka, 2004;Aramyan et al, 2007), electronics industry (Chiang et al 2007), automotive industry (Pires and Neto, 2008) and luxury industry (Brun et al, 2008;Caniato et al, 2011). Exploration of the global/local perspective in supply chain configuration is also undertaken (Meixell and Gargeya, 2005;Cagliano et al, 2008;Caniato et al, 2013). Furthermore, humanitarian supply chain configuration is investigated as a case of a not-for-profit supply chain (Jahre et al, 2009;Costa et al, 2012).…”

“…The supply chain configuration's importance arises from its impact on supply chain decisions and accordingly on the performance, which is the reason behind various studies analysing the configuration. For example, Meixell and Gargeya (2005) explore different configurations of global supply chains; Cagliano et al (2008) define clusters of global and local supply chains; von Haartman (2012) examines Fisher's (1997) model and highlights that the level of innovation and technological maturity are more complex phenomena that influence supply chain design; Caniato et al (2013) develop four configuration archetypes based on the level of outsourcing and the location of manufacturing and sales points; Farahani et al (2014) scrutinise supply chain network competitive design in various industries with different contextual factors to identify a framework for competitive network design; Dubey et al (2015) propose a design for supply chain networks with respect to the sustainability and responsiveness dimensions; and other studies (see e.g., Brandenburg et al, 2014;Holweg and Helo, 2014) develop a supply chain network design based on maximising value creation. The configuration constituents are defined in many studies, predominantly as entities (e.g., supplier, manufacturer or distributor), the size and geographical location of these entities, the relationships between them, the information flow, the supply chain structure and the organisational structure (Randall and Ulrich, 2001;Min and Zhou, 2002;Tang, 2006;Chandra and Grabis, 2007;Srai and Gregory, 2008;Marsillac and Roh, 2014).…”

The development of strategic manufacturing capabilities in emerging and developed markets

“…With its concentration on strategic capabilities, this paper adds to the sparse literature on operations' globalisation that takes a resource-based, internal perspective (Carr 1993;Collis 1991). Issues of global supply chain configurations (e.g., Cagliano et al 2008) or global purchasing and sourcing (e.g., Leonidou 1999) are discussed elsewhere.…”

Mapping supply dynamics in renewable feedstock enabled industries: A systems theory perspective on ‘green’ pharmaceuticals

“…In principal, existing supply chain mapping tools and decision-making frameworks are linear in nature (Joubioux and Vanpoucke 2016). In this regard, they fail to capture any evolution pathways, along with the underpinning causalities, which are essential for conceptualising industrial-level transformations (Cagliano et al 2008), predominantly in relation to institutional developments and technology advances. Moreover, the extant mapping tools often seem to neglect the triplet Bpeople-process-product^thus limiting management's ability to proactively inform about alternative firm strategy options, data flow processes, system stability and complexity phenomena; hence, making reliable inferences about future states of industrial supply networks is challenging (Forno et al 2014).…”