Strategic and operational performance framework for automotive supply chain in Iran

Supply Chain Management (SCM) is one of the most important and complex issues for automakers in the world. The main objective of this research is to explore the factors, which influence strategic performance of the supply chain (SPSC) and operational performance of the supply chain (OPSC) through quantitative and qualitative research in automotive industries. One of the most significant objectives of this study is to compare the key findings such as tested hypothesizes and developed level of constructs between IKCO and Isuzu as cases of study in the automotive industry in IRAN. A total number of 217 and 201 completed questionnaires were collected respectively from IKCO and Isuzu companies. The reliability of data was evaluated by using SPSS to analyze Cronbach’s Alpha, where all values of Alpha were acceptable strongly. According to SPSC and OPSC as the main dependent variables, path analysis (PA) technique was used to explore casual relationships among variables using multi regression in SPSS. Based on PA technique, SPSC and OPSCs were structured to evaluate supply chain performance of IKCO and Isuzu. The confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) were utilized based on the Maximum Likelihood (ML) to analyze normality, outliers, and composite reliability, validity and to test hypothesizes by Amos. In addition, the qualitative research was done to understand deeply the dimensions and to evaluate current status through interview and documentation. In conclusion, research findings imply that strategic performance of the supply chain was influenced by information technology (IT), organizational learning (OL) and product innovation (PRI), while transformational leadership did not influence SPSC. In addition, operational performance of the supply chain was influenced by process innovation (PI) and partnership quality (PQ). The SPSC and OPSCs were examined for the first time in the automotive industry, which as the research gap was concluded and R&D center and SCM were understood as main bases of automakers