Achieving Competitive Advantage through Supply Chain Integration in the Cocoa Industry: A Case Study of Olam Ghana Limited and Produce Buying Company Limited
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18533/ijbsr.v3i2.81Keywords:
Supply chain integration, Competitive Advantage, cocoa industry, Ghana, relative importance index, improved performance.Abstract
The problem of partial supply chain integration has been going on with some organizations in Ghana especially in the cocoa industry. The study sort to empirically, examine supply chain integration practices that could lead to improved performance and competitive advantage; as well as major constrains to competitive advantage within the cocoa industry in Ghana. The study envisaged that, the causes of the industry’s inability to integrate supply chain variables and appropriate solutions found; to curtail the problems of poor performance and effectively integrate supply chain functions for the industry to make informed decisions to improve their businesses and gain competitive advantage. The study revealed the relative importance index run on the mean factors that, some of the case companies stood strong in terms of internal integration using the general relative importance index as benchmark. All the factors of customer integration and supplier integration proved to be very important but not much statistically significant difference between the ratings of the case companies. Even though, some were slightly ahead of others. The study further revealed that there was a positive correlation between all the variables of supply chain integration. The ANOVA analysis confirms existing theory that the three aspects of supply chain integration together lead to improved performance and competitive advantage. Finally, the Cocoa industry, particularly PBC and Olam should adopt pragmatic approach to implement all the three aspects of supply chain integration to improve their performance to achieve sustainable competitive advantage in the cocoa industry.
Downloads
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).