Purpose: Companies increasingly use their supply chain to respond to changes in the business environment and to enhance their competitiveness, increasing their capabilities including the agility and flexibility of supply chain activities. The purpose of this study is to present implications for their supply chain strategies by examining the impact of utilization of ICT (Information Communication Technology) and information sharing on the capabilities of the supply chain. Research design, data, and methodology: This study presents a structural relationship that leads to the enhancement of the agility and flexibility of the supply chain through the use of information technology and information sharing as a research model and an empirical analysis. 284 survey questionnaires responses were gathered from Korean companies, and structural equation analysis was conducted using the Amos 22.0 package. Results: Operational information sharing, strategic information sharing, and information reliability have been identified as factors that increase the flexibility of the supply chain. The factors that improve supply chain agility were operational information sharing and information reliability. The accessibility of information does not have statistically a significant impact on both the flexibility and agility of the supply chain. The relationship between the agility and the flexibility capabilities has a positive impact relationship statistically. Agility has been identified function as a parameter in the relationship of the impact of operational information sharing on flexibility. Implications: Companies often desire to pursue more proactive supply chain management strategies for flexibility capabilities that affect business operations rather than agility capabilities. In order to secure a competitive advantage, a company should provide differentiated services or agile responses that are much more important than cost reduction. Therefore, supply chain management activities should also focus on rapid responses to customer demands rather than reducing cost reduction.
Park et al. (Fri,) studied this question.