Impact Of Supply Chain Integration On Business Performance And Its Challenges

Abstract

The basic objective of this paper is to analyze the impact of supply chain integration on business performance and the challenges associated with supply chain integration. This paper selects different research papers and articles to present the empirical evidence regarding supply chain integration, its impact on business performance and the challenges associated with it.A sample of 21 research papers was selected in the analysis/findings section and discussion section to discuss the impact of supply chain integration on business performance and the challenges associated with the integration of supply chain among different channel partners. The time period of 1995-2011 was selected and only those journal articles/research papers were selected that were published within this period.Different research papers provided an empirical proof that supply chain integration led to better business performance but few of them discussed challenges associated with it. There was only one paper of Awad & Nassar (2010b) that prominently addressed those challenges. This identified a research gap to be filled and weakened the argument that supply chain leaded to better business performance because how it could be argued when the business challenges associated with supply chain integration were not analyzed and assessed efficiently in the previous research. The author also researched and found papers that held an opposite view regarding supply chain integration. Therefore, more empirical research was proposed and advised to be conducted in this area and it was concluded that further research was crucial to understand the importance of supply chain integration, its impact on business performance and its challenges.As for limitations, it was a secondary research that was one of the main research limitations. Secondly, more research papers and journal articles could be researched or reviewed. Therefore, the findings of this paper cannot be widely generalized.The findings of this research paper could encourage researchers and managers to conduct more research for addressing impact of supply chain integration on business performance and its challenges.