Supply Chain Management a Competitive Advantage Evaluation a Study on Cement Manufacturing Companies of Eastern Ethiopia

Abstract

newline ABSTRACT newlineThis thesis titled Supply Chain Management: A Competitive Advantage Evaluation - A Study on newlineCement Manufacturing Companies of Eastern Ethiopia present the findings and the results of the newlinePh.D. work, aims to find the direct, indirect and overall effect of the supply chain management on newlinethe competitive advantage of cement manufacturing industries of eastern Ethiopia. Under the newlinestudy, supply chain management comprises customer relationship management, suppliers newlinerelationship management, inventory management, warehousing management, and transportation newlinemanagement, whereas price, productivity, responsiveness, and quality forms competitive newlineadvantage. Based on the literature review, the researcher had developed a conceptual model for newlinethe study and causal and descriptive research design was conducted in combination. Within the newlineselected two cement manufacturing companies and customers, both probability and nonprobability newline newlinesampling method was employed and collected data using structured questionnaire newlinefrom the supply chain and marketing and sales department employees of both cement newlinemanufacturing companies and customers. Questionnaires were distributed for 306 respondents newlineand the hypotheses developed were empirically tested using IBM-AMOS 22 and Smart PLS-SEM newline3.5. Before testing the hypotheses from the model test, it is found out that all the latent constructs newlinehave a better fit as a higher-order with the underlying constructs as their dimensions. These newlinehigher-order constructs formed the basis for building a structural equation model, then tested for newlinemodel fitness and validity. As per the results, it is found out that the model has a good fit. Based newlineon the hypotheses test result, price, productivity, quality, and responsiveness act as facilitators of newlinesupply chain management and competitive advantage, but quality acts as a facilitator in the newlineopposite direction compared to the other indicators. After identifying the findings, the researcher newlineconcludes that supply chain management has a significant and p