Supply chain dynamism and ambidexterity for sustainable performance

Abstract

Supply chains today operate in dynamic business environments and have options to exercise exploration to identify long-term opportunities and exploitation to maximise the current prospects towards sustainable performance. Hence, this study investigates how supply chain dynamism influences SC (supply chain) ambidexterity as supply chain capabilities to ensure sustainable performance under uncertain environmental conditions. The study tested sixteen hypotheses from extant literature through 361 surveys gathered from various industries and types of organisations. Data is analysed using variance-driven structural equation modelling. The findings illustrate supply chain dynamism’s positive influence on SC ambidexterity and sustainable performance indicators. Supply chain dynamism and environmental uncertainty do not benefit supply chain exploitation. Supply chain exploitation contributes more towards sustainable performance than supply chain exploration. Supply chain exploitation contributes more towards environmental performance than other indicators (social and economic) of sustainable performance. The study presents the implications for theory and practice, along with the scope for future research and concludes with key highlights.

Keywords:

• Supply chain dynamism
• supply chain ambidexterity
• exploitation and exploration
• sustainable performance
• environmental uncertainty
• responsible consumption and production

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Baseline model fit SRMR indicator is: SRMR = 0.061. ULMC model fit SRMR indicator is: SRMR = 0.157.

2 We performed further sensitivity analysis and repeated the test of research model hypotheses using separately the two dimensions of SC ambidexterity, i.e., balance dimension and the combined dimension. Our (unreported) results show that SCDYN is positively associated with environmental, social and economic performances. Results also indicate that SCDYN is negatively associated with combined dimension of SC ambidexterity. Also, results show that balance dimension of SC ambidexterity is negatively associated with both environmental and social performances while the combined dimension is found to be negatively associated with environmental performance.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Issam Laguir

Issam Laguir (Ph.D.) is an Associate Professor in Accounting and Management Control at Montpellier Business School, France. He holds a Ph.D. in Management Science from the University of Rennes 1, France. His research focuses on social and environmental accounting, taxation, and corporate governance and global performance. His research is published in reputed journals of international repute.

Sachin Modgil

Sachin Modgil (Ph.D.) is an Associate Professor at IMI Kolkata in India. He has pursued his PhD from IIM, Mumbai, India in the domain of technology and operations management. His areas of interest include big data, artificial intelligence, supply chain management, sustainable operations and production management, lean management, operations and strategy control. He has more than 12 years of experience including industry and academia. He is also heading ‘Centre for Supply Chain Excellence’ at IMI Kolkata. He has conducted several MDPs and FDPs in operations management domain and has published research papers in leading academic journals.

Shivam Gupta

Shivam Gupta (Ph.D.) is a Professor at NEOMA Business School, France with a demonstrated history of working in the higher education industry. Skilled in Statistics, Cloud Computing, Big Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence and Sustainability. Strong education professional with a Ph.D. focused in Cloud Computing and Operations Management from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur. Followed by PhD, postdoctoral research was pursued at Freie Universität Berlin and SUSTech, China. He has completed HDR from University of Montpellier, France. He has published several research papers in reputed journals.

Sameer Kumar

Sameer Kumar (Ph.D.) is a Professor of Operations and Supply Chain Management and CenturyLink Endowed Chair in Global Communications and Technology Management at the Opus College of Business, University of St. Thomas, Minnesota, USA. He is focused on providing research leadership and a strong commitment to teaching and service. Kumar has published archival journal articles and books in health care systems applications, supply chain systems modelling, systems engineering, system dynamics, humanitarian logistics, environmental-friendly supply chains, risk management, knowledge management, outsourcing, production and service cost economics, and decision support systems.

Rebecca Stekelorum

Rebecca Stekelorum (Ph.D.) is an Associate Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at ICN Business School. She holds a doctorate in management sciences from the University of Montpellier. Her research focuses on sustainable supply chain management, corporate social responsibility, small and medium-sized enterprises, and financial and environmental performance in the banking sector. She has published in several academic journals of international repute. She was rewarded with a thesis prize from the French Association for Logistics (ASLOG) in collaboration with AIRL-SCM.