A resource-based view on enablers of supplier integration: evidence from China

Supplier integration has been a hot topic for both academicians and practitioners since the booming of supply chain management and popularity of Japanese supplier management practices. Previous studies have contributed a lot to the performance impacts of supplier integration. However, not much has been done in investigating the enablers, and little attention has been paid from the resource-based view (RBV) perspective. The organizational resources and capabilities are ignored in empirical studies investigating enablers of supplier integration, although theoretical arguments are strongly supported by RBV. In this study, we identify two organizational resources and two organizational capabilities as enablers of supplier integration based on RBV. Two organizational resources are human resource and information technology (IT) resource while two organizational capabilities are integrative capability and adaptive capability. These resources and capabilities are posited to affect the implementation of supplier integration. With data collected from 604 Chinese manufacturers, we empirically test the impacts of these organizational resources and capabilities on supplier integration. The results show that human resource has direct impact on supplier integration and indirect impact on supplier integration through enhancing two organizational capabilities. IT resource only has indirect impact on supplier integration through enhancing two organizational capabilities. Both of the two organizational capabilities have significant impacts on supplier integration. Relative to IT resource, human resource has higher impacts on the two organizational capabilities. Totally, human resource is much more important in improving supplier integration than IT resource.