Investigating the mediating role of information sharing strategy on agile supply chain

Abstract

Supply chains need to redesign their existing strategies and must develop new strategies to effectively face the challenges posed by certain disruptions, both man-made and natural. This requires the supply chains to be highly flexible, visible, reliable and cost-effective leading to the achievement of Agile Supply Chain (ASC). In today’s competitive market, achieving agility in supply chain needs dynamic leadership, strategic vision, mutual cooperation from all members and effective utilization of information technology through customer focus. In spite of their initiatives to achieve ASC for improving their organizational performance, barring a few large companies, the medium and small size manufacturing companies have not yet been able to adopt and design supply chains which lead to ASC. This may be due to various challenges in the process of achieving agility. Also, the published literature in this area is very scanty. Therefore, to fill this gap, the purpose of this study is to determine the mediating role of Information Sharing Strategy (ISS) on Agile Supply Chain (ASC) practices for achieving Supply Chain Performance (SCP) in medium size manufacturing companies in UAE. An empirical survey of supply chain managers in UAE is conducted for this purpose. It is found that information sharing plays a major mediating role in ASC to achieve superior supply chain performance.