Absorptive Capacity as a Driver of Supply Chain Agility, Supplier Integration, and Customer Integration toward Improved SCM Innovation Performance
Abstract
For sustainable long run performance in today business scenario full of rapid technological developments, intense competition and market instability organisations should constantly upgrade and innovate their supply chain management practices. Agencies are able to make good sense of both internal and external knowledge by analyzing absorptive capacity, a core dynamic capability in this study, so that they are able to reconfigure and alter the resources that are already in place. The performance of the supply chain is improved through both its dynamic capabilities and absorptive capacity, ultimately leading to innovation performance improvement. The research, which is based on the Resource-Based View (RBV) and Dynamic Capability Theory, looks at an organization's absorptive capacity as a fundamental capability that helps supply chain agility, supplier integration, and customer integration develop. Organizations can enhance their supply chain innovation performance by leveraging these capabilities. An organization's ability to rapidly respond to demand variability, supply chain disruptions, and environmental uncertainty is called supply chain agility. Conversely, the extent of strategic alignment, coordination, and information sharing between businesses and their upstream and downstream partners is captured by supplier integration and customer integration. This study proposes an integrated framework that fills a significant void in the existing SCM literature by describing how absorptive capacity drives multiple supply chain capabilities simultaneously rather than examining agility and integration separately. By defining absorptive capacity as an antecedent capability, the research highlights the strategic importance of organizational learning processes, knowledge-sharing platforms, digital information systems, and cross-functional collaboration in turning information into effective supply chain innovations. Using a quantitative research methodology and structural equation modeling techniques, this research work empirically tests the suggested relationships between absorptive capacity, supply chain agility, supplier integration, customer integration, and supply chain innovation performance. The hypothesized findings indicate that absorptive capacity positively and significantly affects supply chain agility and both types of integration. It is hypothesized that these improved capabilities will improve innovation performance by improving responsiveness, improving operational efficiency, facilitating collaborative innovation, and facilitating the development of innovative and efficient supply chain solutions.
Keywords: Absorptive Capacity, Supply Chain Management, Supply Chain Agility, Supplier Integration, Customer Integration, Supply Chain Innovation Performance, Dynamic Capabilities, Resource-Based View, Knowledge Management, Organizational Learning, Inter-Organizational Collaboration, Supplier Integration, Innovation Performance, Strategic Flexibility, Information Sharing, Supply Chain Responsiveness, Process Innovation, Competitive Advantage, SCM Performance, Structural Equation Modeling
