An Adaptive Framework for Improving the Effectiveness of Virtual Enterprises in the Supply Chain

This thesis describes a research project that develops an adaptive framework for improving the effectiveness of virtual enterprises in the supply chains in Mongolia. The research takes empirical and quantitative approach to study the phenomenon of virtual enterprises. Based on a literature review, the factors that influence organisations to join in virtual enterprises are studied by a higher-order factor analysis. As a result, agility is identified as one of the main benefits organisations can gain by joining a virtual enterprise temporarily and changes in business performance are conceived as the measures of effectiveness. Next, a taxonomy of enterprises is developed with five distinguishing clusters that achieve differing levels of agility and business performance. This study suggests that enterprises that are monitoring changes in their business environment take most advantage of agility and achieve the best levels of performance. These findings then allow an adaptive framework based on common reference architectures to be developed as a main contribution of this study. The framework includes a breeding environment as a ‘pool’ of prepared enterprises with the ability to form temporary collaborations to react responsively, rapidly and effectively to the fast-changing opportunities. A structural equation model was used to examine the model fit with the supporting hypotheses, based on the observed data. Then, a powerful clustered expectation maximisation algorithm was applied to the analysis of the grouped enterprises. Finally, a simulation-based case study was conducted to validate the developed framework. The results provide rich empirical evidence of the beneficial impact of virtual enterprises on agile supply chains. The research provides rich empirical evidence of the beneficial impact of virtual enterprises on agile supply chains. It also provides theoretical and managerial insights that can be used to strengthen the drivers, enablers and capabilities that enhance the effectiveness of virtual enterprises collaboration in agile supply chains that can be translated to a global context. These are major contributions the ‘body of knowledge’ in themselves, but the research also adds usefully to the study of applied research methodologies in the area

Predicting the relationships between virtual enterprises and agility in supply chains

In the recent advanced information communications and technology (ICT) era, collaborating virtually and temporarily in supply chains (SCs) to receive mutual benefits such as agility while sharing resources and information becomes an important strategy for enterprises that seek to increase their competitiveness and to optimise their processes and resource usage. As a dynamic and temporary form of alliance from the resource perspective, virtual enterprises (VEs) may contribute network resource heterogeneity and sustain competitive advantage. In addition, agility is suggested as a rare, valuable, network resource that is difficult to imitate and that cannot easily be substituted by other attributes.Although many researchers have investigated VEs and their agility, the research pays less attention to the relationship between VEs and agility in complex SC situations. This paper therefore investigates the relationship between VE and agility in SCs (ASCs) and explores drivers and enablers of agility and outcomes. To clarify the relationships between factors a structural equation model (SEM) is adopted to examine the model fit according to the measurement variables and supporting hypotheses. The results provide rich empirical evidence of the beneficial impact of VEs on ASCs, and theoretical and managerial insights that can be used to strengthen the drivers, enablers and capabilities to enhance the effectiveness of VE collaboration in ASCs in a global and dynamic context. Also, the analysis results can aid a decision maker which ones of the factors are the important ones that he or she should devote more resources and efforts on

Overview of virtual enterprises in supply chain management

In today's ever-changing market, technology development, customer demands and global competition, decreases of product life cycles push logistics organizations in a supply chain (SC) to shift to flexible, robust, autonomy, and responsive organization such as a virtual enterprise (VE). Internet and ICT support SMEs collaboration to establish VE with an inter-organizational network, virtual organization and integration based on core capabilities of partners. To survive in the competitive market, these SCs require agility and effectiveness are obtained by forming highly dynamic VEs within supplier networks. Therefore academic and corporate interest in VE in supply chain management (SCM) has increased considerably in recent years. Although vast papers are published on VE, few of them are directly related to VE in SCs. This paper aims to review existing literature and investigates the issues and challenges of VE in SCM. 46 papers are selected and reviewed. They are published between 2007 to June 2012, a period that has seen a significant increase in this field. Particular attention is given to those issues of collaboration and integration, network organization mode, partner selection, security, negotiation and risk management. Also contributions and methodologies used in papers are discussed

A structural equation model for predicting virtual enterprise and agile supply chain relation

In today's ever-changing market, global competition, technology development, customer demands, and decreases of product life cycles push logistics organizations in a supply chain (SC) to shift towards to flexible, robust, autonomy, responsive, and collaborative organization such as a virtual enterprise (VE). Internet and mobile technology support SMEs collaboration to establish VE with an inter-organizational network, virtual organization and integration based on core capabilities of partners. To survive in the competitive market, these SCs require agility and effectiveness which are obtained by forming highly dynamic VEs within supplier networks. Therefore academic and corporate interest in VE in supply chain management (SCM) has increased considerably in recent years. This paper aims to investigate the relationship between VE and agile SC (ASC) and provide further insights into the enhancement of enterprise capability and adoption of ICT and its impacts on VE in SCM. A conceptual hypothetical model is proposed to demonstrate impacts of three factors on ASC. To clarify the relationships among these, a structural equation model (SEM) is implied to examine the hypotheses based on observed data. The SEM consists of a measurement model (exploratory factor analysis-EFA and confirmatory factor analysis-CFA) and a structural model (path analysis). The results provide empirical evidence that the beneficial impacts of VE on the ASC