The role of national culture on supply chain visibility: Lessons from Germany, Japan, and the USA

With increasing supply chain complexity, companies strive to enhance the visibility in their supply chains, but with a spanning network across national borders, it is essential to consider dissimilar cultural behavior. Thus, this paper aims to analyze the role of dissimilar national-cultural behavio...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal of production economics 2020-12, Vol.230, p.107829, Article 107829
Main Author: Doetzer, Mathias
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Culture
Germany
Japan
Supply chain visibility
USA
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Summary:With increasing supply chain complexity, companies strive to enhance the visibility in their supply chains, but with a spanning network across national borders, it is essential to consider dissimilar cultural behavior. Thus, this paper aims to analyze the role of dissimilar national-cultural behaviors on supply chain visibility (SCV), and to evaluate how companies can adapt to these behavioral characteristics to increase SCV internationally. The methodology of the paper is twofold. First, the paper engages in a systematic literature review (SLR) evaluating behavioral characteristics for SCV enhancement. Because of a multi-interpretable nature of existing literature, the study then follows a qualitative approach, including 49 transcribed semi-structured interviews with supply chain experts from 30 companies in Germany, Japan, and the USA. The findings indicate that SCV-enhancing behaviors differ based on cultural characteristics. However, the single consideration of these characteristics possesses an interpretable nature resulting in a paradoxical situation. By this, the findings indicate that similar cultural dimensional characteristics can be dissimilar based on the influence of other dimensional factors. Overall, this study provides an indication of the importance of national culture for SCV, and the relevance of cultural adaption to enhancing SCV. Through this, it opens the door for further research in this field. The three countries selected can be used as a proxy to measure similar cultures based on Hofstede's cultural dimension model (2001), and thus the contribution strives for analytical generalizability beyond the three countries.
ISSN:0925-5273
1873-7579
DOI:10.1016/j.ijpe.2020.107829