Abstract

Many firms have elevated their supply chain management decision-making responsibilities through the creation of ‘Chief Supply Chain Officer’ (CSCO) positions. This is widely attributed to the recognition that superior supply chain operations can generate a competitive advantage. Prior studies have found that firms with CSCOs outperform firms without CSCOs along many financial dimensions. However, these prior efforts did not examine the pathways by which these improvements occur. This study addresses this gap in the literature by investigating whether supply chain characteristics of manufacturing firms differ within firms with CSCOs. To explore this, we investigate the relationship between CSCOs and operational dimensions of supply chain performance using data from the 10-year period between 2008 and 2017. We find that the presence of a CSCO in a firm is associated with shorter cash conversion cycles, lower levels of operational slack, and larger buffers of inventory during periods of high market instability.

摘要

许多公司通过设立“首席供应链官”（CSCO）职位来提高其供应链管理决策责任。这广泛归因于人们的认识，即卓越的供应链运营可以产生竞争优势。先前的研究发现，在许多财务方面，拥有CSCO的公司要优于没有CSCO的公司。但是，这些先前的努力并未检查这些改进发生的途径。这项研究通过调查制造公司的供应链特征在具有CSCO的公司内部是否存在差异来解决文献中的这一空白。为了探索这一点，我们使用2008年至2017年这10年间的数据调查了CSCO与供应链绩效的运营维度之间的关系。