The perilous path toward supply chain integration addressed from social capital perspective

An aggregated theoretical framework exploring the potential mediating role of knowledge sharing

Abstract

A number of reports indicate that historically, due to its controversial foundations, companies have been struggling in identifying a standard route to pave the way to seamless supply chain integration (SCI) (Bask, A., Juga, J. 2001). The need to unveil the blurriness inherent to this concept  has been exacerbated in the post Covid-19 era (Hassan and Abbasi, 2021),  which had and still have tremendous negative impact on firms productivity.  Through our article we aim at exploring an avenue of analysis to support firms succeed their integrative initiatives with supply chain partners and ultimately make it a successful journey. Our essay is built on the premise that SCI is a form of alliance and social dilemma (McCarter et Northcraft, 2007;Fawcett et al., 2008 ; Agarwal, Croson, et Mahoney, 2009; McCarter & al., 2009 ; Zhao & al., 2011) and thus considered social capital as a grounding theory with social capital dimensions as potential enabling factors of SCI (El Abboubi, M., 2021). Based on an extensive literature review we argue that knowledge sharing, as the fundamental resource to capitalize on by the firms to gain competitive advantage (Grant and Baden-Fuller 1995), plays a mediating role in the potential relationship between social capital dimensions and SCI. This statement is supported by scholars who studied empirically the impact of each facet of the three dimensions of social capital naming, as defined in the framework of Nahapiet & Ghoshal (1998), structural, relational and cognitive dimensions, on fostering the knowledge transfer between stakeholder in the frame of inter or intra-organizational collaboration such as SCI project. Also, it emerges from the literature that knowledge has been identified as a critical pre-condition for effective supply chains (Harland, C.M., 1996; Lee, H.L. et al., 2000) as it provides motivation for collaboration between SC partner and has the potential to enable more effective SCI projects (Lee, Padmanabhan, and Whang 1997a; Lee, So, and Tang 2000).  These findings have been crystallized in a proposal of theoretical research model that requires to be investigated empirically to confirm the validity of the formulated hypothesizes. We closed up the article with highlighting the limits of our work and a proposal of leads for future research.

JEL Classification: J24, O15

Paper type: Theoretical research