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ABSTRACT
Competitive priorities are the critical operational dimensions a process or supply chain must possess to satisfy its internal or external customers. The concept of competitive priorities is very important to organizations because it helps them set up achievable goals and it has long been known to be associated with organizational performance. This research introduces an alternative theory to explain the mechanism by which the buying firms and suppliers adopt different competitive priorities as they enter into buyer-supplier relationships and to explore further how technology choices influence the competitive priority adaptation. Using empirical data collected from the Society of Manufacturing Engineer's executives, a confirmatory factor analysis was used to refine the measurement. The measures were refined to satisfy key measurement rigors including convergent validity, discriminant validity, and reliability. The structural model results show that suppliers' adaption of competitive priorities and IT use is largely influenced by buyers' level of competitive priorities and IT use; however, there is no clear relationship pattern relating to suppliers' competitive priorities and IT use.
INTRODUCTION
Competitive priorities are the critical operational dimensions a process or supply chain must possess to satisfy its internal or external customers, both now and in the future (Krajewski, Ritzman, & Malhotra, 2013). The concept of competitive priorities is very important to organizations because it helps set up achievable goals when implementing corporate plans into operational plans. The competitive priorities help organizations set the right course of actions for process selection. When process capabilities fall short of the predetermined competitive priorities, they must be re-determined and re-focused to close the gap or else revise the priority. There are five common groups of competitive priorities namely cost, quality, time, flexibility and innovation. Finding the right competitive priorities does not happen overnight, many companies struggle for years when making decisions regarding different competitive priorities. Nowadays, large organizations such as Wal-Mart employ information technology (IT) to help achieve competitive priority strategy. Wal-Mart embraced the Retail Link System technology (a mammoth database located in Bentonville, Arkansas) to become an innovator in the way stores track inventory and restock their shelves. Through a global satellite system, Retail Link is connected to analysts who forecast supplier demands to the supplier network, which displays real-time sales data from cash registers and...