An empirical investigation of supply chain strategy typologies and relationships to performance

Abstract

We propose a typology of supply chain management strategies based on data from a large sample of US firms. The resulting typologies and their relationships with firm performance are tested. The result of set correlation analysis on the data revealed six distinct supply chain management typologies, and showed significant statistical relationships with performance. Additional analysis revealed that two of the typologies describe the ideas of velocity, variability, and visibility of supply chains. The paper also discusses the relationship between product life cycle and the supply chain management initiatives that comprise the strategy typologies.

Keywords:

• Operations strategy
• Empirical research methods
• Factor analysis
• Set correlation analysis