Twenty-third International Conference on Knowledge, Culture, and Change in Organizations

Abstract

Supply chain (SC) agility has become an order winner that could determine the firm survival. An agile SC quickly responds to short-term changes in demand or supply. Companies need to constantly scan the environment to react and adapt to changing customer needs. Previous literature confirms that there is still relatively little research focus on the impact of SC agility on performance. This is an important gap, as SC managers need to know the impact that can be expected from the implementation of practices that promote SC agility. The present paper develops a meta-analysis focused on the relationship between SC agility and performance to provide new evidence by critically analyzing and quantitatively synthesizing the results of past research. It provides a quantitative synthesis of research findings from multiple studies to draw comprehensive and valid conclusions. A systematic literature review has been developed drawing on the main databases (WoS and Scopus). A total of 62 papers have been sampled and analyzed considering substantive, extrinsic, and methodological moderators (Meta-Essentials). Preliminary results confirm a positive and significative correlation, but none of the analysed moderators has enabled the identification of any significant differences by subgroup. The results help researchers to address new studies on this important topic. Several best-practice recommendations are also given to develop well-reported papers. Practitioners obtain useful information about the consequences on performance of the implementation of SC agility practices in different sectors and type of countries.