SCs are about people: Exploring complex socio technical systems, collaboration, and firm performance

Abstract

Although Toyota and Honda made CFI a competitive imperative in the 1980s, comparatively few companies have been able to replicate their ability to compete through the effective design and day-to-day management of cross-functional processes. Given the competitive intensity of today’s marketplace, investigating how firms integrate and leverage key resources across functional boundaries is relevant and timely. Historically, firms have relied on technology investments to promote collaboration. One result of this technology-centric orientation is that managers, as well as academics, often fail to consider the human factor as we design, manage and study our value-added systems. The central role of people in collaboration makes this oversight problematic. To elucidate the role people play as part of the complex socio technical systems that underlie a collaborative capability, we conduct a survey of senior supply chain managers from European firms. We evaluate the antecedent role of empowerment and explore how a collaborative capability influences not just organizational performance but also the performance of a firm’s people. Our structural equation model informs the interplay among organizational commitment, technology, and socio initiatives in the cultivation of a collaborative capability. We find that while committing resources to connectivity and empowerment facilitates intra-firm collaborative capabilities, their eventual translation to superior value creation and financial performance is through the performance of the firm’s people.