Supply Chain Technologies: Linking Adoption, Utilization, and Performance

Much has been written in the literature on the adoption of supply chain technologies (SCT). However, little has been written on why once adopted, the levels of utilization and the effectiveness of SCT differ. Therefore, the objectives of this study are to investigate (1) why firms achieve more or less SCT utilization and (2) how SCT utilization relates to performance. To address the first objective and, using a survey of manufacturing firms in Australia, we identify and investigate how efficiency and legitimacy motivations for adopting SCT can help explain different levels of SCT utilization in firms. To address the second objective, we investigate the link between SCT utilization and delivery performance and the role that both information sharing and logistics integration play as moderators of that link. Our empirical results show that: (1) efficiency motivation for SCT adoption more significantly and positively relates to SCT utilization in firms than does legitimacy motivation for adoption; and (2) there is a positive relationship between SCT utilization and firm performance and this increases when the level of information sharing between supply chain partners increases. This study contributes to the extant literature which has generally reported inconsistent results in terms of how SCT utilization actually affects performance as well as taking a nascent step toward understanding the conditions under which SCT utilization is more or less effective in so far as it relates to delivery performance.