CONTEXTS AND MECHANISMS TO DEVELOP SUPPLY CHAIN INTEGRATION AND IMPROVE PERFORMANCE: A MULTI-METHOD INVESTIGATION

Supply Chain Integration (SCI) is a management practice that aims at creating “seamless” supply chains through the sharing of information, skills and resources among supply chain partners. If properly implemented, SCI plays an important role for the competitiveness of companies and, for this reason, it has been widely studied by scholars. However, despite the extensive literature, several research gaps, regarding both its proper and effective implementation and its relationship with performance, exist. In response to the mentioned gaps, this PhD research has the following three main goals: 1. To investigate the role of context in shaping the relationship between supply chain integration and performance; 2. To understand how to properly implement supply chain integration; 3. To identify and empirically investigate contingent factors that interact with supply chain integration to provide the maximum performance benefits to companies. The thesis is a collection of three scientific papers, each of which addresses one of these three main goals. The first paper realizes a Systematic Literature Review on the fit between context, SCI practices and performance. The aim is not only to provide a comprehensive overview of the state-of-the-art of research to better understand the influence of context on the SCI-performance link, but also to identify “white spaces” for future research opportunities. The second paper focuses instead on a particular form of SCI, the Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) process, and studies how to execute transitions between different maturity levels. Three case studies of S&OP transitions are analyzed and compared in order to develop an understanding of common patterns and differences in the dynamics occurred. Finally, the last paper, a survey-based research, tests the contingent effect of supply base reduction on the relationship between four different dimensions of upstream integration and two performance measures, efficiency and innovation. Using data of the High Performance Manufacturing project, the paper provides suggestions on how to combine supply base reduction and supplier integration in order to maximize performance. Overall, this thesis provides several contributions for both theory and practice. On the one hand, it offers a detailed and original overview of the SCI literature and extends our knowledge on the topic of SCI. On the other, it also provides indications to managers on how to implement SCI, identifying potential mistakes and drawbacks that could easily hinder the effective implementation of SCI or the achievement of its expected benefits.