Exploring the Complex Social Processes of Organizational Change: Supply Chain Orientation From a Manager’s Perspective
通过访谈7家制造企业的121位供应链经理，运用扎根理论揭示管理者在组织转向供应链导向过程中的认知、目标设定与环境解读等复杂社会过程，填补了该领域从管理者视角研究的空白。
Effective supply chain management strategies can lead to substantial improvements in customer value and reductions in system wide costs for each participant. Implementing supply chain management strategies, however, is not possible without embracing supply chain orientation (SCO) as a managerial philosophy. Organizational theorists have argued that organizations change only when the people in them change, yet we know little about the complex social processes occurring in the minds of the individuals involved in creating an SCO. The current literature lacks research that describes the transition to an SCO from a supply chain manager’s perspective. Our objective is to fill this gap by delving into the minds of operations managers, who must carry out an interpretation process to set goals, process information, perceive their environment, and actively solve problems when confronted with the organization’s decision to implement supply chain initiatives. We adopt an interpretivist ontology through utilizing grounded theory to provide an in‐depth analysis of interviews from seven manufacturing organizations and 121 supply chain managers to provide a rich description of those managers’ perceptions and challenges throughout the transition. Managerial and research implications as well as future research opportunities are provided.