An Investigation of Visibility and Flexibility as Complements to Supply Chain Analytics: An Organizational Information Processing Theory Perspective

Many businesses are seeking to develop and exploit analytics capabilities today. Using organizational information processing theory (OIPT), we study demand visibility and supply visibility as foundational resources for analytics capability, and organizational flexibility as a complementary capability. We further examine relationships among these factors under varying conditions of market volatility, a type of environmental uncertainty. The results from our analysis of data from 191 global firms indicate that both demand and supply visibility are associated with the development of analytics capability. In turn, analytics capability is shown to be more strongly associated with operational performance when supply…