The role of the social factors in generating innovation within mature industry supply chains: a case study
Creators: name: Burgess, Kevin
Publisher: name: RMIT University
Year: 2024

description: Supply chain literature has increasingly argued that supply chains are being used by a wide range of industries to generate innovations which deliver competitive advantage, and that social factors such as trust and collaboration play a key role in making effective supply chain management (SCM). Closer examination of the research suggests that much of this literature is based on studies of industries which deliver consumer products and these studies are predominantly conducted within a positivist research framework. This research bias has resulted in far less attention being paid to studies of mature industrial markets. This case study seeks to redress such bias by posing an overall question regarding the role of social factors in innovation within a well established supply chain which existed across three mature, capital intensive industries ï¿½ steel manufacturing, transport an d railroad track construction and working outside the positivist paradigm by using a multidisciplinary research approach within a ï¿½critical realist frameworkï¿½. <br><br>In responding to the overall research question, three subordinate questions were explored. Firstly, how well suited are present corporate governance structures of individual organisations to deal with the newly emerging interconnected organisational structures in order to support the generation of innovations within supply chains? Secondly, what has been the impact of the widespread adoption of information technology in generating innovation in supply chains? And thirdly, what is the role played by interorganisational social networks in generating innovations within supply chains? <br><br>The overall findings were that the social factors played a far more important role than had hitherto been acknowledged in either supporting or inhibiting innovation within supply chains. Corporate governance was seen to generally inhibit innovation between organisations. The claims of much of the SCM literature which asserts a strong link between IT and innovation in supply chains was not supported. In fact, it was found that the majority of subjects preferred to get information through social systems. The role of interorganisational networks (IONs) was found to be most effective at generating incremental innovations aimed at maintaining operational efficiency. A critical realist research approach was able to uncover some difficulties associated with a purely positivist research paradigm which restricts investigation to the empirical level of ontology. The critical realist approach was able to explore social causal mechanisms and structures which were not as readily accessible at the empirical level of inves tigation. It was found that multiple realities existed across the supply chain, and that the positivist assumption of a mono reality which underpins much of the enterprise resource planning (ERP), process management and governance approaches was in fact inhibiting the ability of the social system to be innovative and ultimately driving up costs. In fact a process management approach supported by information technology and operating within present corporate governance structures created conflicting goals which increased complexity. A key finding of this study was how the open social system of the supply chain used dynamic relationships to overcome the rigidities and complexity of a closed systems logic embedded in the formal governance and information systems.