"A Structure-Conduct-Performance Perspective..." Article Analysis
The title of the article for the analysis is: A Structure-Conduct-Performance Perspective of How Strategic Supply Chain Integration Affects Firm Performance. It was published in Journal of Supply Chain Management in April, 2015. The key objective of the reviewed article was to analyze the impact of supply chain integration on the performance of the average company and to establish the link between the strategy, supply chain, and final level of company’s performance (Ralston et al., 2015).
Utilized Sources
The authors utilized one hundred and fourteen various sources to conduct the exploration. Due to the fact the key issue of the article was supply chain integration, the authors deeply analyzed that issue from the side of different views. Moreover, they divided the issue on internal and external integrations, and explored the views of other consequent authors towards the matter of integration. Via the combining of the thoughts of Skinner, Bowersox, Gloss, Stank, and others it was claimed that internal integration can have a significant impact on the company’s continuous success. The above-mentioned authors published their studies in different periods of the twentieth century. At the same time, the authors reviewed the papers of Narasimhan, Koufteros, Pagell, and others in order to come to the conclusion that dealing with internal integration was not enough, and thus external integration was also necessary. The authors of the reviewed article also argued that those two types of integration have an impact on company’s ability to handle with demand changes on the market. As a proof, they depicted the studies of Braunscheidel and Suresh. All the studies about external integration and demand changes were published within the last fifteen years.The methodology of the article was based on the tailored design method of Dillman’s web survey approach that was published in 2000.
Evaluation and Critique
The literature review was conducted with the high levels of depth and breadth. However, there were no sources analyzed from the side of practical implementation of the combination of internal and external integration in the business reality of this or that company. It means, the literature review needs expansion. For example, various sources with deep exploration of this or that business structure could have been added in order to establish the link between the theoretical base for the research and recent practical implementations of the reviewed principles.There is also a gap in methodology. Due to the fact article was based on one precise method, but not on the combination of approaches, the gap appeared during analysis of initial data. The database stored the information about 4456 potential respondents as of early 2011 year. Due to the fact the article was published four years later, the data quality and actuality might have been inappropriate. Another shortcoming was the fact that only 2172 respondents were reached and just 220 of them agreed to participate in the exploration. It means, the whole exploration was based only on nearly 5% of the initial quantity of the participants. In case the amount was …
