Exploring the Impact of Globalization and Technology on Supply Chain Management

Abstract

This article reports on results of a research aimed at understanding the relation between globalization and technology and what impact this relation has brought to the modern global supply chain. The research focuses on the e-business/e-commerce, a new but fast growing concept as a supply chain operation model, to compare and discuss the differences of related aspects to global supply chain management versus similar practices a decade earlier. An online questionnaire was used to collect data and the participants were all supply chain experts working for the same global logistics and transportation company. Participants' perceptions were collected about their online experience and how they have experienced the change in supply chain management as a result. The research revealed that there is a relationship between globalization, technology use, and the impact of these two elements on the evolution of the global supply chain in the e-business industry. Also, the ‘digitalization' is leading the global supply chain operations to a new operation platform. There were two main limitations in this study; a) relatively small sample size, and b) the majority of participants had a logistics background and this may have impacted their reported perceptions.