Reconceptualising Integration for Agility in the Supply Chains of UK Fashion Brands
Authors:   , McGowan Karina 
Published: January 2025

As the fashion industry has become increasingly agile, several UK fashion brands have struggled to compete. This thesis adopts a Critical Realist philosophical stance and a Dynamic Capabilities perspective to critically analyse the factors affecting partner and process integration and establish how they are impacting UK fashion brands achieving supply chain agility (SCA). A qualitative intra-industry case study was designed to investigate practitioner accounts of the complex, layered, and contingent factors that are affecting partner and process integration allowing for plausible explanations to be developed as to their impact on SCA.

The first significant theoretical contribution of this study is the development of a theoretical framework synthesising the dimensions and capabilities required for SCA in the fashion market. The second, is a revision of the initial conceptual framework relating only to SCA to include the dimensions, capabilities and factors affecting both SCA and supply chain integration (SCI). The revised framework contributes to theoretical knowledge by presenting a comprehensive understanding of the logical relationship between the SCA and SCI constructs relevant to the fashion supply chain.

The empirical case study findings contribute to theoretical knowledge in the provision of a comprehensive taxonomy of factors that affect SCI in the supply chains of UK fashion brands. This is an original contribution to theoretical knowledge. This taxonomy should add value to the field by providing a useful and usable resource for developing deeper understandings of SCI in the fashion market. Moreover, the case study findings add value to the literature in the development of explanations as to the specific agility dimensions and capabilities that are enabled/constrained by the factors that are affecting partner and process integration across the supply chains of UK fashion brands. This is another original contribution to theoretical knowledge.

Furthermore, the case study findings make an original contribution to practice. Three integration maps have been developed that may aid UK fashion brands and their suppliers in the identification of strategic, organisational, operational, technological and relational factors that are affecting SCI and thus, impacting SCA. The maps answer calls in extant research for the development of applicable frameworks that encompass all basic factors of SCI in order to benefit both researchers and practitioners (e.g. Yu and Fang, 2023). It is hoped that they will reduce the challenges surrounding the implementation of SCI theory in practice by identifying the specific level at which key challenges are thought to have emerged. Collectively, the integration maps offer a more interdisciplinary perspective on fashion SCI than is available in extant research. They shift focus beyond the study of supply chain relationships and coordinated processes at the dyadic level by combining the knowledge and perspectives of practitioners with different roles, skills and responsibilities along the supply chains of UK fashion brands. In sum, they answer calls in extant research to address interdisciplinarity in the supply chain (e.g., Naslund and Hulthen, 2012) specific to the supply chains of UK fashion brands.