Influence of organisational culture on strategic collaborations amongst the supply chain partners

Abstract

The dynamic and global economy presents organisations with opportunities to prosper, however, the market has increasingly become more competitive. The challenge for organisations is to remain competitive sustainably manner while delivering value to shareholders and stakeholders. Supply chain function plays a vital role in ensuring that an entity stays competitive and what has become prevalent is for entities to enter into strategic supply chain collaborations to maximise on synergies and expertise to increase competitiveness of both partner organisations. Although many collaborations are formed on a mutual basis, not many have succeeded, and organisational culture has been pointed out as one of the leading actors contributing to the failure of such strategic partnerships. A quantitative and explanatory research was conducted with an objective of identifying and isolating the subsets of organisational culture, which influences the outcome of supply chain collaborations. It was found that the adhocracy culture, based on the competing values framework (CVF), is more influential towards a successful outcome of the collaboration. Furthermore, the chances of supply chain collaboration success increase with the more experienced participants being part of the collaboration to provide a leadership role for aligning expectations, roles and responsibilities; and thus, reducing conflict among collaboration partners.