The antecedents of supply chain agility and their effect on business performance: an organizational strategy perspective

In a rapidly changing business environment, supply chain agility has been recognized as an important source of sustainable competitive advantage. A large number of studies have explored the antecedents of supply chain agility, but there is little analysis from a strategic perspective. Taking into account the guiding role of strategic orientation in business development, we want to establish a link between strategic orientation and supply chain agility. Therefore, this paper chooses two strategic orientation, namely learning orientation and technology orientation, as two antecedents and test their effect on supply chain agility and also test whether supply chain agility has a mediating effect on the relationship between the two antecedents and business performance. Survey data were collected from 208 Chinese manufacturing enterprises and the structural equation model (SEM) was used to test the proposed hypotheses in the research model. The results show that the two antecedents have a positive effect on supply chain agility and supply chain agility can improve business performance. It also shows that both learning orientation and technology orientation can indirectly promote business performance through the mediating effect of supply chain agility.