Supply Chain Flexibility, Agility and Firm Performance (Published)
Supply chain flexibility is widely seen as one major response to the increasing uncertainty and competition in the marketplace. That is to say a firm with a flexible supply chain is likely to survive and grow its market share. Despite several evidences suggesting that performance improvements are related to SCM, managing supply chains today and practicing flexibility has become more difficult due to the fact that business environments are highly competitive, businesses are going more global, dynamic, and customer‐driven. Therefore, this study assessed the path between supply chain flexibility and firm performance using supply chain agility as a moderating variable. A total of 77 manufacturing and service firms operating in the Kumasi metropolis were selected as sample. The sample was made up of key management staff as well as non-management operatives of the firms. Questionnaires was used as instrument for data collection. The findings revealed that SC Flexibility and SC Agility positively correlated firm performance (p<0.01/0.05). Additionally, moderating SC Agility on SC Flexibility, produced a positive effect, however the effect was insignificant and this implies that SC agility does not significantly moderate the positive impact the SC Flexibility has on firm performance. SC flexibility better predicts firm performance through SC Agility as a moderator and not moderator. Therefore, it is rather necessary to appreciate the individual roles that both SC Flexibility and SC Agility play to ensure value for customers and thereby contributing to firm performance and not necessarily moderating each other.
Keywords: Agility, Firm Performance, Flexibility, Supply Chain
Service Delivery at Fuel Service Stations: An Evaluation of Consumer Satisfaction in Gaborone, Botswana (Published)
The study sought to evaluate consumer satisfaction with regard to fuelling services in Gaborone, Botswana. The importance of four of the five operations performance objectives (Quality, Speed, Dependability and Flexibility) to the motorists was determined. The performance rating of various fuel service stations (FSSs) on the four operations objectives was determined. The aim was to establish if the FSSs were excelling in those operations objectives considered important by the consumer. Results showed that the order of importance of the four operations performance objectives was: Speed (71.9%), Quality (70.2%), Flexibility (59.6%), and Dependability (56.1%). The most important objective for FSSs to excel in is speed. However, FSSs still need to perform reasonably well in the other objectives as their ratings (all over 50%) indicate that they are also important to the customers. The performance ranking for the FSSs was Quality (93.0%), Dependability (91.2%), Speed (87.7%), and Flexibility (57.9%). The FSSs performed better in the Quality and Dependability objectives yet the Speed objective was the most important to the consumers. Significance testing using the Chi Square Test indicate that the strongest relationship between importance and performance exists for the Flexibility objective (Pearsons correlation-Asymp.Sig = .025) and is weakest for the Speed objective (Pearsons correlation-Asymp.Sig = .105). This indicates that FSSs were not excelling in the objective that is most important to the consumer- Speed. FSSs in Gaborone need to improve service delivery by increasing the speed of serving customers.
Keywords: Dependability, Flexibility, Operation, Performance Objective, Product, Quality, Service, Speed