The Moderating Effect of Manufacturing Capabilities in the Relationship between Strategic Supply Chain Management and Business Performance

Abstract

Study objective: The objective of this research was to investigate the moderating effect of manufacturing capabilities on the relationship between supply chain management and business performance in enterprises associated with technopoles in Brazil.

Methodology/Approach: Initially, we carried out in-depth interviews with ten chain managers to learn about the manufacturing capabilities in order to develop a questionnaire for data collection. Then, we submitted the questionnaires to pretesting in ten enterprises. One hundred and twenty-five responses were collected from six technopoles.

Originality/Relevance: In the supply chain management literature, there are records of its influence on business performance; however, research that directly investigate the moderating effect of manufacturing capabilities on this relationship are scarce, which indicates the relevance of this research and its originality for studies involving supply chains and technopoles.

Main results: We found, with the data processed by linear regression, that manufacturing capabilities moderate the relationship between supply chain management and business performance.

Theoretical/methodological contributions: From an academic point of view, the research’s contribution was the identification of the moderate effect of the manufacturing capabilities construct, through variables such as skilled production personnel, advanced production methods, and the effective transformation of research and development in effective production, to increase business performance.