CONCEPTUAL AND STATISTICAL MODELING FOR IDENTIFYING LINKAGES AMONG SUPPLY CHAIN STRATEGY, FLEXIBILITY AND PERFORMANCE

In the current competitive and globalized market situation, the supply chain performance (SCP) and supply chain management (SCM) practices such as supply chain strategy (SCS), supply chain flexibility (SCF) are playing a very important role in enhancing the overall performance of any organization. A hike is noted in the number of firms trying their utmost to achieve strategic competitiveness through befitting implementation of SCM practices, and thereby taking their performance to the next level. SCM, now turned out as one of the fastest growing and key area in management, as a result of which, it successfully grabbed the attention of top management in respective organizations. This study significantly examines the relationship of SCS; SCF with SCP in the Indian automobile industry, and this association was examined through statistical methods such as the correlation coefficient (Pearson) and structural equation modeling (SEM). The final result reveals that SCS and SCF have a momentous correlation with SCP. Specially SCS parameters such as innovative strategy (INS), customer-oriented strategy (COS), and agile supply chain strategy (ASCS) has a high correlation with SCP. The SEM result also shows that SCF parameters such as Innovative &new product flexibility (IF), process flexibility (PF), delivery flexibility (DF), information flexibility (INF) and existing product flexibility (EPF) appear to be of chief importance and show evidence of the importance of SCP.The result shows the significant importance of SCP of the automotive industry in India. The result findings also suggest that the automotive industry should firmly emphasis on SCM practices.