Tanzanian SMEs’ Perceptions towards Adoption of Supply Chain Management (SCM) Strategy

Abstract

Although a number of Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) in Tanzania economy is high, their share innational income is significantly low due to lack of efficiency. The choice to implement supply chain and supplychain management by SMEs will lower costs and increase efficiency, which will eventually help in loweringcosts and increase gains to both SMEs and the country.In this research we have compared the differences in perceptions of small and medium-sized enterprises againstlarge enterprises. The methodology, employed was cross-sectional survey of Tanzanian enterprises engaged inagricultural processing. The findings clearly show that SMEs give less attention to supply chain managementstrategies, also reluctant to employ transparent integrated system to link them with other actors in the chain.Absence of compatible organization structures in SMEs is seen as a major obstacle for complete implementationof integration strategy.