ویژگی های بازار نوظهور و تنظیمات شبکه زنجیره عرضه مواد غذایی در سطح بین المللی

The effect of emerging market characteristics on supply network design is explored through case studies involving international food manufacturers entering emerging markets. Our findings suggest that institutions, and primary and supportive actors may often be considered as potential constraints, and appear to have a dominant role in determining the adjustment of supply network's structural attributes. A supply network adjustment categorisation emerges from the results, as emerging market characteristics may require adjustments in the company's supply network configuration, practices and policies in terms of: (1) network strategy and position; (2) changes to firm boundaries; (3) changes to product mobility; and (4) changes to geographical configuration. These adjustments may go through a life cycle of initial home country convergent practice as firms attempt to roll out established practices, later divergent strategies that adapt to emerging market contexts, and finally more convergence as contexts develop. From a managerial perspective, our findings suggest that a proactive network design approach is needed, requiring analysis of market characteristics and exploring potential supply network adjustments under four configuration dimensions. Our research also enables policy makers to better understand the implications of market characteristics to internationalising firms.

Globalisation and the continued growth in the international trade of manufactured products and components (Buckley and Ghauri, 2004 and http://www.wto.org/english/res_e/statis_e/its2005_e/its05_toc_e.htm), require effective international supply networks (SN) to procure, use and transform resources into goods and services (Harland et al., 2001 and Srai and Gregory, 2008) that can be distributed to customers. Inevitably this requires firms from advanced markets (AM) to operate in diverse environments and conditions (e.g. Klassen and Whybark, 1994 and Narasimhan and Mahapatra, 2004). This issue of managing operations in diverse contexts is very relevant for firms from AMs, as emerging markets (EM; such as Brazil, Russia, India and China, the so called ‘BRIC’ economies), but also other developing countries (World Bank, 2011) are both attractive offshore manufacturing locations and key centres of demand. In many cases, EMs present operational challenges in terms of supply chain cost and reliability (http://www.worldbank.org/lpi and Badri et al., 2000). Existing research has suggested the negative effects of EM characteristics on supply chain management (SCM) related to the lower quality and availability of infrastructure and resources, or the nature of local regulations in EMs (e.g. Fawcett, 1993, et al., and Gulyani, 2001). Transferring resources to a new market may be difficult and the outcome of such a process is dependent on for example key suppliers and technologies (Carranza et al., 2002), or complementary resources in the host country (Cuervo-Cazurra et al., 2007). These effects are expected to be particularly strong in the food sector where the characteristics of products and raw materials (e.g. perishability) place specific requirements on SN configuration (Taylor and Fearne, 2006, van der Vorst and Beulens, 2002 and van Hoek, 1999). In support of the argument that the business environment may potentially have a significant impact on operations performance and network design, previous research has relevantly pointed out that the value of a firm's resources and capabilities depends as much on the context, as on the properties of the asset itself (Miller and Shamsie, 1996, Priem and Butler, 2001 and Wan, 2005). As a result of resource value-affecting characteristics of the environment, internationalising firms from advanced markets have been shown to redesign, adapt or adjust their SN configurations (Liao et al., 2011, Lorentz and Ghauri, 2010, Nassimbeni and Sartor, 2007 and Jiang, 2002). Prior research has also confirmed that high performing companies (re)design manufacturing strategies to fit their environments (Swamidass and Newell, 1987 and Ward et al., 1995). These potentially costly and difficult to implement SN adjustments, which are however essential for maintaining performance and competitiveness, are the focus of this research. Again, food supply chains represent a particularly interesting sector context, as the SN tier structure involves extended long tier supply chains of upstream and downstream actors with firms making strategic choices on product characteristics and the location of upstream and downstream activities (Srai, 2013). Hence, we state our research question as follows: How do emerging market characteristics affect the food supply networks of internationalising firms? Underscoring the relevance of this research question, previous research has stressed the importance of understanding the EM environment and the resulting practices of internationalising firms ( Handfield and Withers, 1993 and Avittathur and Swamidass, 2007). We contribute to this extant understanding by taking the SN practice perspective and considering the relationship of a range of drivers to particular SN adjustments, and how supply networks evolve through stepwise adjustments. The research is limited to AM firms' internationalising their operations to EMs. Therefore, we aim to contribute to the body of literature on international operations management, and specifically on the less studied area that deals with operations in developing countries and EMs (Prasad and Babbar, 2000). We also contribute to the emerging literature on supply chain adaptation (Seifert and Langenberg, 2011 and Liao et al., 2011). In practical terms, the exploratory case studies presented in this paper provide operational level insight into SN design adjustments in EMs.

Four SN adjustment patterns have emerged from the analysis on how firms adjust their AM based and established SN management policies, routines, practices and configurations. These include changes to (1) network strategy and position, (2) firm boundaries, (3) mobility of the product, and (4) geographical configuration. Furthermore, it appears that these changes go through a life cycle of initial home country convergent practice as firms attempt to roll out established practices, divergent strategies that adapt to EM contexts, particularly in early stage maturing EMs, and then a move to more convergence as EMs develop and there is integration of best practices. The synthesis of the framework suggests wider applicability beyond the food sector although this has not been tested in this research. The main limitation of our research is that it has not mapped SN adjustments holistically or in a consistently longitudinal manner (Barratt et al., 2011). The results are also food industry specific, although parallels can be drawn to other industries with limited shelf-life products. Consequently, this research cannot make generalised conclusions on the dominance of certain constraints or adjustments over others, or their order of occurrence. Addressing these limitations, further research efforts should focus on mapping a wider range of SNs in various industries in order to contribute to our understanding of the dominant constraints and the required adjustments in certain market conditions. Moreover, longitudinal studies would have the benefit of describing SN adjustment evolution paths (e.g. the convergent–divergent–convergent-observation in some cases) and their relation to the home market and host market development of SCM practices. Further research may also switch the research set-up to a context where EM firms internationalise to AMs (Fleury et al., 2012 and Srai, 2013).