Research on Supply Chain Information Collaboration and
Performance based on Inter-organizational Information System
Yaqing Zhang and Syed Norris Hikmi Syed Abdullah
*
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Azman Hashim International Business School, Malaysia
Keywords: Inter-Organizational Information System, Supply Chain Information Coordination and Performance, Big Data
System.
Abstract: In China's market environment, more and more enterprises use inter-organizational information system to
make information flow across organizational boundaries. It can strengthen the cooperation between
organizations and win strategic competitive advantages for enterprises. Supply chain management is one of
the most important parts. Therefore, this article starts from the main functional direction of big data
technology, analyzes the impact of big data system on the information aggregation ability and information
extraction level of supply chain enterprises, adopts Likert five-point scale to measure supply chain
performance, and proves through empirical evidence. It is verified that the ability of information aggregation
and the level of information extraction have a significant positive impact on the performance of the supply
chain. Finally, the study will present a comprehensive framework to deal with the supply chain performance
of Chinese enterprises and a modest addition to the supply chain performance literature concerning strategies
for elevating supply chain performance in the Chinese enterprises. It aims to provide inspiration for Chinese
managers and organizations to cope with the escalating challenges.
1 INTRODUCTION
In the era of economic globalization, the competition
among enterprises is unprecedentedly fierce, the
demand for technology renewal and information
resource control is unprecedentedly high, and further
spread to the supply chain level. Using big data
technology to improve the core competitiveness of
the supply chain has become an inevitable choice for
relevant enterprises (Singh, 2016, Teng, 2016). In the
era of network economy, information has become one
of the most important resources in supply chain
management. It can be said that whether supply chain
partners can effectively "share information" has
become the key to the success or failure of supply
chain management (Asamoah, 2020, Agyei-Owusu,
2020, Andoh-Baidoo, 2020). With the gradual
deepening of organizational performance and quality
management research, controlling information
resources to coordinate quality management systems
among different enterprises has reached a certain
consensus in academic research and practical practice
(Yang, 2020, Chen, 2020, Hao, 2020). However, in
what way does big data system affect supply chain
quality management and ultimately improve
organizational performance, it has not formed a
generally recognized theoretical system (Tran, 2016,
Childerhouse, 2016, Deakins, 2016). Information
sharing among supply chain partners can effectively
reduce the bullwhip effect, reduce information
distortion and information risk in supply chain
management, and effectively improve the operation
performance of supply chain (Partanen, 2020,
Kohtamki, 2020, Patel, 2020). At present, the
problem of information sharing among supply chain
partners has become the focus of theoretical research,
and a large number of research results have been
obtained (Kim, 2016, Han, 2016, Yi, 2016).
However, these research results mainly focus on the
value of information sharing among supply chain
partners, and there are few research results on the pre
factors of information sharing among supply chain
partners (Wu, 2021, Ma, 2021, Li, 2021).
Profound changes have taken place in the
traditional market, and the scope of management has
been expanded to all relevant resources inside and
outside the enterprise (Basak, 2016, Guha, 2016). In
this new competitive environment, if enterprises want
to remain invincible, they must re-examine their
business models, strengthen their internal process
900
Zhang, Y. and Abdullah, S.
Research on Supply Chain Information Collaboration and Performance based on Inter-organizational Information System.
DOI: 10.5220/0011356800003440
In Proceedings of the International Conference on Big Data Economy and Digital Management (BDEDM 2022), pages 900-905
ISBN: 978-989-758-593-7
Copyright
c
2022 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
management and contact with partners in the supply
chain to meet the changing needs of customers, and
quickly respond to the opportunities brought by their
competitors' new business models and new
technologies (Long, 2017). Information sharing
among supply chain partners is inseparable from the
support and assistance of IT technology and
information system. The organic integration and
collaboration of information system among supply
chain partners will be a solid foundation for sharing
information (Rameshwar, 2018, Angappa, 2018,
Childe, 2018). Therefore, information system
collaboration among supply chain partners is likely to
be a very important factor affecting information
sharing, but further in-depth empirical research is
needed (Zhang, 2018, Cao, 2018). In order to make
up for the deficiency of current theoretical research,
this study will use empirical research methods to
explore the impact of supplier and manufacturer
information system collaboration and information
sharing on enterprise operation performance, and it is
expected that this study can provide practical
theoretical basis and guidance for Chinese enterprise
supply chain management (Zhang, 2018, Cao, 2018).
2 DEFINITION OF RELATED
CONCEPTS
2.1 Supply Chain Management
In order to have a deeper understanding of supply
chain and supply chain management, the definitions
of "supply chain" and "supply chain management" by
domestic and foreign scholars will be described and
combed below. Supply chain is a process of
controlling from suppliers to users through value-
added process and distribution channels. It starts at the
origin of supply and ends at the end of consumption.
Supply chain is a network cooperation between
organizations, including products and services from
upstream to downstream. Supply chain is a network
composed of a series of units. The network
successfully transforms raw materials into
intermediate work in progress, and finally into final
products and delivers them to customers and final
consumers. The process from raw materials and parts
procurement, transportation, processing,
manufacturing, distribution to final delivery to
customers is regarded as a chain, which is the supply
chain. The business process of the supply chain can be
divided into four aspects: work process, physical
process, information process and capital process, as
shown in Figure 1:
Figure 1: Supply chain business process.
Workflow, that is, transaction and management,
is the use of information to make decisions. The
workflow starts from the needs of consumers. The
initial work includes demand analysis, product
development and design, and the formulation of
production plan; Then there is the occurrence of
business and transactions, including the conclusion of
contracts and commitment to transactions between
enterprises, and making transaction decisions is the
most important work of all entrepreneurs; The last is
the implementation, including the whole process
from organizing production, handling import and
export documents to implementing sales. Physical
process is the delivery and transfer of physical goods,
and it is a necessary process to perform transactions.
The physical process includes the whole
transportation process, warehouse management and
packaging distribution. Compared with logistics,
capital flow is a process in which enterprises collect
customers' payment and pay off suppliers' payment
after selling products. Information is the basis of
action in all links of the supply chain. The
information process includes collecting, processing
and analyzing data and providing useful information
to assist each member of the supply chain to make
appropriate business decisions and take
corresponding actions. Supply chain management is
to optimize the supply chain and complete all
processes from procurement to meeting the final
customers at the least cost. The above workflow,
physical process, capital process and information
process are required to operate efficiently.
Research on Supply Chain Information Collaboration and Performance based on Inter-organizational Information System
901
2.2 Supply Chain Integration
Supply chain integration is a very important research
direction in the field of supply chain management in
recent years. Supply chain integration integrates the
management of various relationships, activities,
operations, processes and locations of different
members in the supply chain. However, there is no
unified standard for the definition of supply chain
integration at home and abroad. Most scholars define
it based on their research perspectives and needs.
Therefore, the following will sort out the concepts
and dimensions of supply chain integration, and
define "supply chain integration" on this basis, so as
to lay the foundation for the development of various
studies in this paper. Supply chain integration is a
kind of cooperation management between supply
chain partners in order to provide customers with
higher value and improve competitive advantage.
Supply chain integration refers to the collaboration
and cooperation within and among node enterprises
in the process of supply chain management,
including: the behavior integration of node
enterprises, the process integration of the whole chain
network, information integration, sharing risks and
rewards, collaboration and cooperation and
relationship integration. On the one hand, the main
motivation of most enterprises participating in supply
chain integration is to integrate internal and external
processes through strategic cooperation with supply
chain partners, so as to efficiently manage product
flow, service flow, information flow and capital flow,
and finally obtain excellent performance. Therefore,
how to understand "performance" is particularly
important. On the other hand, because this paper
mainly discusses the relationship between supply
chain integration and performance, it is necessary to
clearly define the concept of "performance". As
shown in Figure 2, the factors affecting operation
performance are:
Figure 2: Factors affecting operational performance.
Performance is a concept of "performance"
involved in this paper, including enterprise
performance and supply chain performance. Among
them, enterprise performance is analyzed from two
aspects: enterprise operation performance and
enterprise financial performance. Through the
analysis of the literature on the relationship between
supply chain integration and enterprise performance,
it is found that generally speaking, enterprise
performance includes operation performance,
innovation performance, customer service
performance, market performance, financial
performance, etc. these studies will define and
measure different performance according to actual
needs, and there is no unified definition. The financial
performance of enterprises mainly refers to the
performance of enterprises in terms of profitability,
operation ability and solvency. Generally, the
indicators that may be used include return on assets,
earnings per share, return on sales, return on
investment and so on. There are many different views
on the definition of supply chain performance.
Generally speaking, it can be defined from the aspects
of customer orientation, internal operation, future
development, financial value and so on. Supply chain
performance is defined and measured from the
aspects of supply chain flexibility, delivery,
inventory, efficiency and new product introduction
speed.
3 THEORETICAL BASIS OF
SUPPLY CHAIN INTEGRATION
RESEARCH
3.1 Transaction Cost Theory
The use of resources often can not rely on market
guidance. Due to the high transaction cost in the
market, enterprises can reduce the transaction cost by
allocating resources instead of the market.
Transaction cost theory mainly discusses how to
minimize production costs and transaction costs
while constructing their own boundaries, including
various necessary behaviors. Transaction cost
determines whether a transaction is carried out in the
enterprise or in the market. The factors affecting the
transaction cost are divided into six categories, and
these six categories of influencing factors do not exist
independently, but a complex relationship and will
affect each other, and finally increase the transaction
cost. Bounded rationality, the original rational
behavior of human beings trying to maximize their
interests, will limit their rational behavior because of
the limitations in spirit, physiology and language.
BDEDM 2022 - The International Conference on Big Data Economy and Digital Management
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Therefore, the behavior in the transaction process is
not the most rational result, and the irrational
behavior of both parties will increase the difficulty of
transaction; Opportunistic behavior refers to the lack
of frankness or honesty in transactions, including
seeking self-interest by deception; Uncertainty is a
situation in which it is impossible to predict partner
behavior or future changes in the external
environment; For a few transactions, because some
transaction processes are too specialized, or because
heterogeneous information and resources cannot
flow, the trading objects are reduced or the market is
controlled by a few people. If this happens in the
transaction, it is easy to produce opportunistic
behavior; Information asymmetry is due to
uncertainty and opportunistic behavior; Atmosphere:
under the condition of harmonious atmosphere, the
negotiation process or contract signing between the
trading parties is very smooth. On the contrary, if
there is speculation and distrust between the trading
parties in the trading process, it becomes more
difficult for both parties to sign and trade, and
increases the transaction cost. As shown in Figure 3,
it is a longitudinal study of performance growth:
Figure 3: Longitudinal research on performance growth.
Due to the change of market environment,
information asymmetry and human bounded
rationality, people can not fully predict the future
situation in advance. In addition, the uncertainty will
also affect the investment of special assets, and then
affect the specific degree of investment protection.
Transaction uncertainty increases the market risk and
makes the signing of transaction contracts more
complex. With the increase of supervision cost and
bargaining cost, the transaction cost increases. With
the increase of transaction frequency, the collection
cost of transaction information and the signing cost
of transaction process will increase significantly.
However, at the same time, multiple transactions or
cooperation will also make each other understand
each other and increase the degree of mutual trust,
which can reduce opportunistic behavior, reduce the
risk of cooperation and improve the efficiency of
cooperation. In addition, the increase of transaction
frequency makes the enterprise internalize the
economic activities of the transaction to save the
transaction cost of the enterprise.
3.2 Methods of Researching Content
Based on the realistic background and research status,
aiming at the shortcomings of the current research,
this study focuses on "whether and how supply chain
integration affects performance". Based on cross-
sectional data, this paper mainly discusses the impact
mechanism of internal integration, customer
integration and supplier integration of supply chain
on enterprise operation performance, and then
analyzes the impact of situational variables such as
enterprise scale, industry attribute and country on the
relationship between the above variables; Based on
the longitudinal data at two time points, this paper
mainly discusses the impact mechanism of internal
integration change, customer integration change and
supplier integration change of supply chain on
enterprise operation performance change and supply
chain performance change. On this basis, this paper
discusses the mode of supply chain integration and its
relationship with enterprise operation performance
and supply chain performance. The research methods
used in this study mainly include the following four
methods: literature discussion and theoretical
analysis method, questionnaire survey method,
second-hand data method and data statistical analysis
method, as shown in Figure 4:
Figure 4: Research methods of supply chain information.
The study, sorting and analysis of relevant
literature is the basic work of academic research,
which lays a solid foundation for learning from
relevant theories and understanding the latest
research trends. In order to explore the impact
mechanism of supply chain integration on operational
performance, supply chain performance and financial
performance, analyze the key influencing factors of
supply chain integration and how different forms of
Research on Supply Chain Information Collaboration and Performance based on Inter-organizational Information System
903
supply chain integration affect performance, this
study will collect a large number of relevant literature
at home and abroad, analyze and sort out relevant
literature from the aspects of theoretical basis and
research status, It is concluded and compared to
clarify the concept and its relationship, so as to lay
the foundation for the research hypothesis and
conceptual model; Questionnaire survey is one of the
main research methods of this study. The number and
scope of enterprises and the variables involved in the
questionnaire mainly include supply chain
integration, operation performance and supply chain
performance; The second-hand data method is
organized, implemented and submitted on time
according to the contents of the statement system of
industrial enterprises formulated by the National
Bureau of statistics. Industrial statistical indicators
include main technical and economic indicators such
as industrial added value, total industrial output value
and industrial sales output value, as well as main
financial cost indicators, employees and total wages;
Data statistics and analysis methods. In order to
process the data and verify the research hypothesis,
the data analysis methods used in this study mainly
include: descriptive statistical analysis, analysis of
variance, correlation analysis, exploratory factor
analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, structural
equation model analysis and hierarchical linear
model analysis.
4 CONCLUSIONS
Using structural equation model and difference
analysis method, supply chain information discusses
the relationship between information system
collaboration, information sharing and operation
performance between manufacturers and suppliers,
and obtains some meaningful conclusions: firstly, we
believe that information system collaboration among
supply chain partners is a unique, scarce and non
imitatable competitive resource of enterprises, It can
bring sustainable competitive advantage to
enterprises; Secondly, our empirical results show that
information system collaboration among supply
chain partners plays a very important role in
improving the content and quality of information
sharing; Thirdly, our empirical results also find that
the direct effect of information system collaboration
among supply chain partners on enterprise operation
performance is not significant; Fourth, our empirical
results also show that the information sharing content
and information sharing quality among supply chain
partners have a significant positive impact on all
dimensions of enterprise operation performance,
which means that the information system
collaboration among supply chain partners has a
significant indirect effect on enterprise operation
performance. Senior management should not only
pay attention to the construction of information
infrastructure of investment enterprises, but also pay
attention to the seamless connection with the
information systems of upstream and downstream
enterprises of supply chain partners, so as to improve
the coordination level of information systems among
supply chain partners, so as to cultivate them into the
company's core resources, which will bring
sustainable competitive advantages and benefits to
the company. Only when the mutual trust relationship
reaches a certain level, the information systems of
both sides can realize seamless connection.
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