Environmental factors, supply chain capabilities and business performance in horticultural marketing channels

This paper investigates the relationship between environmental uncertainty, supply chain capabilities and business performance in the context of the Zimbabwean horticultural industry. We hypothesised that the development of most supply chain capabilities would be negatively associated with environmental uncertainty and that supply chain capabilities would be positively related to the performance of the individual businesses in the supply chain. These hypotheses were tested using structural equation modelling. The hypotheses were generally supported for the relationships between environmental uncertainty and supply chain capabilities. However, most supply chain capabilities and environmental uncertainty were seen to be negatively related to business performance. We used established constructs for environmental uncertainty and business performance and developed new measures of supply chain capabilities. The main contributions of the paper are to simultaneously test the linkages between the three constructs and to develop new measures of supply chain capabilities.

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