Development of an Analytics and Collaborations Integrated Supply Chain Risk Management Capability Measurement Instrument based on the Information Processing Theory and the Relational View

Abstract

Supply chain risk management (SCRM) plays a vital role in any business entity, comprising activities that aim to prevent, detect, respond to, and recover organizations from the impacts of disruptive events. Both analyzing supply chain (SC) data and collaborating with SC partners help firms manage risks effectively during disruptions. Although supply chain analytics (SCA) is an integral element of SCRM, the existing measurement instruments for SCRM do not fully integrate SCA as it is used in the Sri Lankan manufacturing context. However, SC collaborations (SCC) are invariably included in these measurement instruments. Hence, the primary objective of the study was to develop a new measurement instrument for the analytics-and collaboration-integrated SCRM capability of Sri Lankan industrial product manufacturing sector using Organizational Information Processing Theory (OIPT) and the Relational View (RV) as theoretical lens. The study employed an exploratory quantitative research design. The items were generated from both the literature on related measurement instruments and the results of a previously conducted qualitative study. Then, the finalized items were used in an online survey administered to 205 randomly selected SC managers from industrial product manufacturing organizations in Sri Lanka that engaged in global business. Initially, an exploratory factor analysis was conducted to identify the factors representing the firms’ analytics collaboration-based SCRM capabilities. The study proposed a novel four-dimensional measurement instrument for evaluating analytics and collaboration-based SCRM, and it includes: (1) analytics-based risk assessment, (2) information sharing-based risk mitigation, (3) analytics-based risk identification and monitoring, and (4) collaboration-based strategic risk mitigation. Subsequently, a confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to validate the measurement instrument for the identified factors. Given the increasing importance of collaboration and analytics-based SCRM, the validated measurement instrument introduced in this study would be a valuable tool for advancing future research on SCRM.