Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) are facing an ever increasing pressure to think carefully and strategically of ways to compete and grow in what can only be described as a turbulent business environment. This more so for those SME's that have built their growth strategy on the development of new product where the competition is shifting from a company orientation to a supply chain based rivalry. Accordingly achieving qualities such as agility are becoming critical to the success of supply chains. Such dramatic changes make the traditional approaches to business strategy, i.e business growth strategy, which has been based on the company providing a match between its business environment and its internal capability questionable. While, the value of supply chain in determining organization's growth strategy has received some attention a practical perspectives and solution yet to be provided. This research has focused on studying and exploring the position of supply chain in the growth strategy formulation process in SME's to identify the main factors contributing to the above concept and the relationship among the strategic influencing factors from a market, dynamic capability, and supply chain points of view. The research was conducted through: an extensive literature review; three in-depth case studies to identify how practitioners think and act with respect to the position of supply chain issues in growth strategy formulation and why it is important to involve the supply chain issues earlier in growth strategy formulation. A mini-survey and semi-structured interview followed the findings of case studies to extract more evidence at a broader scope. From the above study, a conceptual framework is proposed from which a practical approach emerged to assist SME's that develop new product to think about the supply chain proactively thus future proofing their product and securing their growth strategy.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:569272 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Qiu, Jun |
| Publisher | University of Liverpool |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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