摘要: | 研究期間:10208~10307;In a turbulent business environment, supply chain flexibility and agility become the essential capabilities for helping a firm and its trading partners survive and generate supernormal rents. How to enhance supply chain flexibility and agility, therefore, is a critical issue that supply chain companies have to face. Unfortunately, we still lack sufficient knowledge of the factors enabling supply chain flexibility and agility and the theory to guide our analysis. This three-year project attempts to deliberate the antecedents of flexibility and agility in supply chain based on the relational view, which prior studies have seldom used in this field. This project focuses on IT factors enabling and relationship factors enabling mechanisms, which may impede or enhance flexibility and agility and may also complement each other in generating performance. Based on the relational view, we identify IOS integration, absorptive capacity, complementary capability, and mutual trust as the relational determinants and regard supply chain flexibility and agility as kinds of relational rents for developing a comprehensive research framework. In the first year, the project emphasizes the development of relevant constructs and a research model. We will elaborate how these relational determinants directly, indirectly, or complementally facilitate supply chain flexibility and agility, thus addressing the debate on the effects of IT and relationships on impeding or enhancing flexibility and agility. A survey study will be conducted empirically. With the first year results as the foundation, the project in the second year attempts to draw up some special and normal samples for in-depth investigation in order to clarify the relationships we proposed and compare their differences. A case study, focusing on answering why questions, will be conducted. Consequently, our variance model proposed in the first year can be supported by process model proposed in the second year. The third-year project will analyze the change stages from relational determinants to supply chain flexibility and agility. The targets are to deliberate how relational determinants support activities of changes and reconfigurations and then impede or enhance flexibility and agility. A case study and a survey study will be conducted in order to reach the final destination of understandings of change stages. This three-year project is expected to develop comprehensive understandings of IT and relationship determinants with the support of theoretical development, quantitative survey analysis, and in-depth case study. This will provide a solid foundation for further empirical testing and theory development. |