Achieving supply chain agility through IT integration and flexibility

Being responsive is an increasingly important skill for firms in today's global economy: thus firms must be agile. Naturally, it follows that an organization's agility depends on its supply chain being agile. However, achieving supply chain agility is a function of other abilities within the organization, specifically supply chain flexibility and information technology (IT) integration. Using empirical data, we find a domino effect among IT integration, supply chain flexibility, supply chain agility, and competitive business performance. Results from this study indicate that IT integration enables a firm to tap its supply chain flexibility which in turn results in higher supply chain agility and ultimately higher competitive business performance. While these results indicate that firms should invest first in IT for integrating information before investing in flexible processes, additional research is needed. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.