Revisit the relationships and dimensions of supply chain integration for business outcomes

Abstract

In recent years, driven by low cost, many global supply chains have been used to realize global procurement and manufacturing chains. Obviously, supply chain integration is a practical means to be applied to various supply chain networks to improve supply chain performance. However, the global supply chain has been continuously interrupted by natural disasters, epidemics, and human error in the past few years. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and the blockade of the Suez Canal in 2021. These incidents have caused supply disruptions and factory shutdowns in global manufacturing and retail. With the expansion of supply chain integration, the interdependence between supply chain partners increases, and the vulnerability and risks of the supply chain also increase. Therefore, the dimensions of supply chain integration, namely internal integration and external integration, the relationship between them and their impact on business outcomes need to be further studied. The main purpose of the review is to put forward a conceptual framework of supply chain integration to study the relationship by collating the past literature.