Published Online: Nov 18, 2022
Page range: 127 - 142
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/fman-2022-0008
Keywords
© 2022 Lijuan Xu et al., published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
In the 21st century, most businesses are not just faced with a significant increase in competition due primarily to the impact of the globalization. Economic globalization quickly changed the very essence of competition on the macro-economic scale, transforming the competition among producers into the competition of supply chains. In response to the global economy's volatility and turbulence, supply chain competition is given the role of the primary essence of corporate competition (Xu, 2019).
Supply chain management (SCM), originally used to plan and control physical and information flows, internal and external logistics and interactions with other companies, as well as to develop customer and supplier relationships, has become a key driver in improving the companies’ efficiency and competitiveness (Núñez-Merino, et al., 2020). This had increased the real economy's demand for high-impact supply chain management practices.
The true art of management and the key to capturing a long-term competitive advantage are to effectively manage the supply chain and optimize all business processes from idea development to its commercialization and customer satisfaction. Finding the most productive model for converting the flow of goods into finished products of high quality and ensuring efficient logistics to the end consumer with all their needs in mind are the main goals of the supply chain management.
The more products and product lines a company produces, the more unique supply chains are involved in the business:
How to organize and control the quality of personnel training, inventory management, and waste disposal process in the most efficient way? How to reduce without affecting the volume of production, logistics, and environmental costs? How to minimize customer complaints and increase loyalty? How to minimize CO2 emissions into the atmosphere? On which supply chain priorities should resources and management talent be focused to achieve increased business process efficiency?
Finding answers to all these questions is at the heart of the proposed methodology.
At the level of the world economy, this goal should also cover the specific features of the countries involved: the levels of their economic and technological development and their specialization. To avoid an increase in the complexity of production and logistics relations between countries and the unwieldiness of the supply chain, modernization and improvement of its management system are something that should be permanently implemented in the practice of the corporate management.
In addition to the objectively complex, cumbersome global supply chain system, the business environment has been complicated by the crisis in many industries due to the COVID-19 pandemic and quarantine restrictions imposed by the governments to counter the spread of the deadly virus. This sudden external shock has exposed significant fragility in traditional supply chain models.
Many companies have almost immediately lost key competitive advantages under quarantine regulations, facing a sudden disruption of previously very efficient supply chains. On top of that, many of the previous management practices became irrelevant in the current context, which imposes completely new demands on supply chain management. To ensure competitiveness, supply chains should be, first, sensitive, adaptable (Xu, 2019) and highly resilient in response to the volatility (Bui, et al., 2021). Therefore, the innovative methods to improve the supply chain management gain momentum.
The supply chain is both a multi-level system covering production, logistics, sales and after-sales service, and a seamless, coordinated process of multiple business operations. By preserving and enhancing the productivity of business relations with suppliers of raw materials, components and semi-finished products, minimizing the costs of warehousing and maintaining distribution centers, expanding the market niche and establishing an effective sales network, a company is confidently growing and occupying leading positions in the market.
The functioning of each link in this chain involves time and resources, which increase the cost of goods, so the task of managers is to reduce the time of goods passing through the chain, to optimize costs, and to reduce the total number of unnecessary, high-cost links. The quality of management of this process determines a company's competitive position and prospects in the face of unforeseen and negative impact of external shocks.
The paper was motivated by the real economy's critical need for effective cutting-edge methods to improve the supply chain management to ensure the sensitivity, adaptability, and high resilience of supply chains to the adverse impact of the volatile environment.
It is necessary for corporate management to develop an effective (in practice) methodological toolkit for assessing the quality of supply chain management. The research is structured as follows. Literature review covers the analysis of supply chain management and the fragmentary context of studying the topic in different sources. The review presents an analysis of approaches to the problem in terms of innovative technologies and digitalization and geographical differences.
The problem is put from the perspective of the emerging objective need to create a new scientific and applied approach for enterprises, applying which would make it possible to improve the efficiency of supply chain management. In the statement of the problem, the hypothesis is put forward that the post-Soviet countries by virtue of a common economic history have similar economic models of supply chain management. The methods and materials include the research architecture, description of the database, research methods, questionnaire, and evaluation indicators.
The results present the obtained industry and job structure of the survey participants, the results of the sample acceptability and normality analysis, the ABC analysis of supply chain priority scores and correlating them with the significant criteria.
The reactive model of management implemented in small- and medium-sized enterprises in the countries under study is ineffective under the aggressive influence of the external environment, due to which critical management methods should be introduced.
In the discussion, the authors analyzed their developments and showed the advantages of the formed approach: measurability, scalability, simplicity, and cost-effectiveness.
The conclusion of the study is to confirm the original hypothesis and justify the need to introduce more radical and critical methods of the supply chain management.
The crucial role of supply chains in ensuring competitiveness has brought about considerable interest in the supply chain management among researchers (Mohamad Mokhtar, et al., 2019; Ongbali, et al., 2021; Yu, Zhang and Huo, 2019). From 2008 to 2020, at least 2,402 papers on supply chain management optimization and resilience have been published in the Scopus-indexed journals (Bui, et al., 2021). However, content analysis shows that the topic is highly sought-after in 91 countries in five geographical regions, including Asia and Oceania, Europe, North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Africa (Bui, et al., 2021).
Yet, despite the significant interest among researchers in the issues of improving the supply chain management, it should be emphasized that most papers address theory (Andiyappillai and Prakash, 2020; Shashi, et al., 2020; Min, Zacharia and Smith, 2019) or provide a review (Hofmann, et al., 2019; Treiblmaier, 2019; Zhang, Yu and Zhang, 2020), largely preventing reliance by businesses on the research findings.
On top of that, several studies had a narrow focus on the supply chain management, making inter-sectoral or transregional adaptation difficult (Cole, Stevenson and Aitken, 2019). Nunes, et al. (2020) present an overview of promising supply chain designs focusing on providing biomass to energy industries, while other researchers have focused on short food supply chains with limited lead times (Fauzi, et al., 2020; Paciarotti and Torregiani, 2020).
The paper by Attaran (2020), focusing on the drivers of development of digital technologies and their importance for supply chain management, is of major interest. The study analyzes the main innovative technologies and analytical methods widely used by supply chain leaders and enabling the development of fundamentally new supply chain designs to give businesses additional competitive advantages over the traditional models, including:
robotics, sensor technologies, augmented reality (AR), big data, Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing technology (CCT), blockchain, and 3D printing (Attaran, 2020).
Rejeb, Keogh and Treiblmaier (2019) assign a crucial role to IoT and blockchain technology in improving supply chain management. A special focus is made on the synergies arising from the simultaneous use of IoT and blockchain because:
the blockchain technology positively affects the scalability of IoT solutions, the blockchain technology improves the security of IoT solutions, the immutability of the blockchain technology has a positive impact on auditing IoT solutions, and the Mutable Blockchain technology creates new application scenarios for using and managing IoT, the blockchain technology positively affects the efficiency, effectiveness, and integrity of information flows in IoT solutions, the blockchain technology positively affects the traceability and interoperability of IoT solutions, the blockchain technology positively affects the quality and integrity of IoT solutions (Rejeb, Keogh and Treiblmaier, 2019).
A hybrid decision-making approach relying on quality assurance technology to select supply chain resilience metrics is also based on combining several innovative technologies. It is a combination of quality function deployment (QFD) and aggregation of the decision-maker's opinion, evaluation metrics, and data collection complexity assessment (Abdel-Basset, et al., 2019).
This paper specified:
economic metrics (commitment to cost reduction, inventory turnover, environmental costs, measuring instruments and methods, responsiveness to changes in demand, manufacturing costs, delivery costs), environmental metrics (waste minimization, air pollution, CO2 emissions, recycling), social metrics (ambient noise level, customer complaints, employee training, workplace environment), assessment of the supply chain quality (Abdel-Basset, et al., 2019).
Yet, the multi-country study of supply chain management practices in small- and medium-sized businesses confirms statistically significant differences in:
factors of the supply chain management, country, and sector-specific drivers, constraints, practices, operations, environmental, and social sustainability.
The study denies statistically significant differences related to the size of businesses (Kot, Haque and Baloch, 2020). Hwihanus, Wijaya and Nartasari (2022) demonstrated the significant impact of supply chain management on companies’ performance and competitiveness. They relied on quantitative methods and data analysis techniques in investigating the role of supply chain management as a driver of competitiveness and productivity of small- and medium-sized businesses in Indonesia.
A significant work in the methodological context is the large-scale study by Kot, Haque and Baloch (2020), who proved through the empirical experience of 613 small and medium enterprises in Canada, Iran, and Turkey that factors, barriers, and practices of small and medium enterprises and factors of environmental and social sustainability significantly contrast in economies of different historical formation. They do not differ significantly in terms of enterprise size. Based on statistical analysis, the authors suggested that the determinants of the supply chain management that affect enterprise performance differ in the context of the economies in question, showing a significant impact on supply chain operations.
However, this influence is significantly higher in developed economies than in emerging and middle-income economies (Kot, Haque and Baloch, 2020).
Recognizing the importance and relevance of the previous research, it should be emphasized that, despite the significant number of research papers, available effective innovative methods to improve the supply chain management clearly do not meet the demands of the real economy. Global economic changes driven by the adverse impact of uncontrollable external factors require businesses to act urgently to ensure that their supply chains are aligned with the changed business environment, which is essential for achieving sustainable development. Therefore, the paper was motivated, with its purpose and objectives determined, by the critical need of businesses and other entities in effective methods to improve the supply chain management in their response to insufficient research of the issue.
This paper developed a methodological approach to assess the supply chain management for small- and medium-sized businesses. The goal is achieved through phased performance of the following research tasks:
analyze relevant publications; develop the research design, its methodology, and tools; develop a methodological approach to assess the supply chain management; pilot the developed methodological approach to assess the supply chain management in small- and medium-sized businesses in the Russian Federation, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan; identify the country-specific main features of supply chain management in small- and medium-sized businesses; develop recommended practices to improve the supply chain management for small- and medium-sized businesses in Russia, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan.
The main research hypothesis (H1) was the assumption of significant similarity of supply chain designs in the economies which used to be a part of the larger Soviet economy.
The main research tasks were performed in the form of a sophisticated multi-country research project combining desk and field research methods. The research design is presented in Fig. 1.
Figure 1
Research design (
When determining the research design, a simple phased approach to implementation of the research tasks was opted for. The choice of the research design was largely justified by the limitations of the study, since a sophisticated research design allows for a shorter timeframe but requires a large outlay.
The following factors were considered when selecting research methods and instruments:
efficiency; clarity and ease of understanding, and cost effectiveness.
Furthermore, given the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, the research tools were designed according to the principles of social distancing, allowing the survey to be conducted regardless of the level of pandemic threat.
The choice of businesses for piloting was justified by the following:
firstly, the need to obtain evidence to test the research hypothesis (H1), secondly, very few research papers on supply chain management in the selected countries.
On top of that, due to the specific nature of business activities in post-Soviet economies, methodological approaches which are appropriate for both the Western and Asian business environments require significant adaptation. This makes it difficult to implement effective supply chain management practices and adversely affects the competitiveness of businesses and the entire economy. Therefore, the following post-Soviet economies were chosen to test the developed methodological approach: Russian Federation (hereinafter referred to as Russia), the Republic of Azerbaijan (hereinafter referred to as Azerbaijan), and the Republic of Kazakhstan (hereinafter referred to as Kazakhstan).
The companies for testing the developed methodological approach were selected randomly from relevant country-specific databases (State Revenue Committee, 2021; State Tax Service under the Ministry of Economy of the Republic of Azerbaijan, 2021; Unified State Register of Legal Entities of the Russian Federation, 2021). A total of 400 companies were selected for the survey, including 200 Russian companies and 100 companies from Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, respectively. The sample size limitation was considered: the survey was conducted for small- and medium-sized businesses, in accordance with the official definition thereof in each country.
The quarantine regulations related to the COVID-19 pandemic and the need for social distancing were considered when selecting the primary data collection method. Therefore, Google Forms were chosen as the main method of research. Invitations to participate in the survey were emailed to the selected companies.
A questionnaire consisting of two parts was developed to conduct the survey:
Part 1. Demographic profiling of the respondent. Part 2. Assessment of the supply chain management.
Closed-ended single choice questions were used in the questionnaire design to facilitate comprehension and increase the proportion of valid questionnaires. A 5-point Likert scale was used to assess the key criteria for supply chain management (Part 2). The scale allows for a high level of respondent understanding and significant survey findings with comparative ease of processing the questionnaires and interpreting the results (Sangthong, 2020).
The 5-point Likert scale included the following answers to the survey questions:
absolutely disagree – 1 point, disagree rather than agree – 2 points, not sure – 3 points, agree rather than disagree – 4 points, totally agree – 5 points.
The questions for assessing the supply chain management (Part 2) were formulated using the previous surveys (Abdel-Basset, et al., 2019) and adapted for the respondents. The question regarding the company's consent to the survey was included in the questionnaire. Therefore, written consent to participate in the survey was obtained for all questionnaires deemed valid and allowed for analysis.
The questionnaire was designed in Russian and translated into Azerbaijani and Kazakh languages for better respondent perception.
When processing and interpreting primary information, encryption methods (during the questionnaire processing phase) and graphical representation of data (during the data interpretation phase) were widely used.
Normality and reliability of the sample were assessed using the mean value, standard deviation, as well as the
The mean value μ in this study was calculated using formula 1:
The standard deviation
The Pearson correlation coefficient for assessing the normality and acceptability of the questions according to the
An ABC analysis of the resulting estimates was conducted based on the Pareto principle to highlight priority groups of criteria.
The main limitations of the research included the quarantine regulations related to the COVID-19 pandemic, which influenced the choice of tools for primary data collection. In addition, the limited budget (which affected the research design, the choice of research tools, as well as the sample size) should be considered as a significant limitation of the study.
68 percent of respondents accepted 400 invitations to participate in the study, resulting in 272 completed questionnaires. During the initial processing of the questionnaires, 16 questionnaires were declared invalid due to incomplete or incorrect information entered therein. Therefore, 256 questionnaires were admitted for further research, including 124 questionnaires provided by Russian companies, with 65 and 67 questionnaires provided by Azerbaijani and Kazakh companies, respectively.
The sectoral structure of the companies is presented in Fig. 2.
Figure 2
Respondents’ sectoral structure (
Fig. 3 shows the roles of the persons who filled out the questionnaire.
Figure 3
Roles of the persons who filled out the questionnaire (
Therefore, 53% of the questionnaires were filled out by the companies’ directors, which is typical for surveys conducted among small companies. 15% of the questionnaires were filled out by logistics managers (mostly in transport companies), 9% were filled out by deputy directors, 9% were filled out by sales managers, 7% of the questionnaires were filled out by production managers, 6% of the questionnaires were filled out by sales managers, and 1% of the respondents chose the answer “Other”.
The respondents’ roles affected the structure of the respondents’ training: only 4% of the respondents reported secondary vocational education, while 96% of the respondents reported higher education. Furthermore, the respondents’ roles shaped the respondents’ structure by their track record in the industry: 58% of the respondents worked for more than 10 years in the industry, while 32% of respondents claimed over 20 years of experience in the industry, suggesting high working knowledge of the industry-specific details of supply chain management.
Table 1 presents the results of the acceptability and normality test of the sample using the mean, standard deviation, and the
Sample acceptability and normality test (
| Question | Mean value | Standard deviation | Elements-outcome ratio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Commitment to cost reduction (RQ1) | 4.41 | 0.581 | 0.278 |
| Inventory turnover (RQ2) | 4.47 | 0.552 | 0.268 |
| Environmental costs (RQ3) | 2.87 | 0.779 | 0.222 |
| Measuring instruments and methods (RQ4) | 2.14 | 0.789 | 0.271 |
| Responsiveness to changes in demand (RQ5) | 4.40 | 0.673 | 0.366 |
| Production costs (RQ6) | 4.48 | 0.58 | 0.379 |
| Logistics costs (RQ7) | 4.47 | 0.545 | 0.407 |
| Waste minimization (RQ8) | 3.33 | 0.869 | 0.381 |
| Air pollution (RQ9) | 2.95 | 0.803 | 0.323 |
| CO2 emissions (RQ10) | 2.06 | 0.782 | 0.273 |
| Recycling (RQ11) | 2.92 | 0.815 | 0.286 |
| Ambient noise level (RQ12) | 2.96 | 0.818 | 0.306 |
| Customer complaints (RQ13) | 3.09 | 0.861 | 0.303 |
| Employee training (RQ14) | 2.98 | 0.819 | 0.21 |
| Workplace environment (RQ15) | 2.96 | 0.818 | 0.342 |
According to the normality and acceptability test, the mean value of the scores using the 5-point Likert scale ranges from 2.06 to 4.48, with the standard deviation not exceeding 0.869, which gives all reasons to consider the sample normal and acceptable.
Additional sample reliability and acceptability test using the
Therefore, the analysis suggests that the sample is acceptable, normal, and reliable.
Let's prioritize the supply chain development based on the ABC analysis (Table 2).
ABC analysis for assessing the key development priorities for supply chains (
| Metric | Mean value, score | Mean value, % | Mean value %, cumulative | Group |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Production costs (RQ6) | 4.48 | 8.87 | 8.87 | A |
| Inventory turnover (RQ2) | 4.47 | 8.85 | 17.72 | A |
| Logistics costs (RQ7) | 4.47 | 8.85 | 26.57 | A |
| Commitment to cost reduction (RQ1) | 4.41 | 8.73 | 35.3 | B |
| Responsiveness to changes in demand (RQ5) | 4.4 | 8.71 | 44.01 | B |
| Waste minimization (RQ8) | 3.33 | 6.6 | 50.61 | C |
| Customer complaints (RQ13) | 3.09 | 6.12 | 56.73 | C |
| Employee training (RQ14) | 2.98 | 5.9 | 62.63 | C |
| Ambient noise level (RQ12) | 2.96 | 5.86 | 68.49 | C |
| Workplace environment (RQ15) | 2.96 | 5.86 | 74.35 | C |
| Air pollution (RQ9) | 2.95 | 5.84 | 80.19 | C |
| Recycling (RQ11) | 2.92 | 5.78 | 85.97 | C |
| Environmental costs (RQ3) | 2.87 | 5.68 | 91.65 | C |
| Measuring instruments and methods (RQ4) | 2.14 | 4.24 | 95.89 | C |
| CO2 emissions (RQ10) | 2.06 | 4.08 | 99.97 | C |
Based on the analysis, group A – the most important supply chain development metrics for respondents – should include
lower production costs (RQ6); higher inventory turnover (RQ2); lower logistics costs (RQ7).
Group B – the supply chain development criteria that are important enough for the respondent – should include consistency of the approach with cost reduction (RQ1) and responsiveness to changes in demand (RQ5).
It is obvious that according to the classification proposed by Abdel-Basset, et al. (2019), all metrics of group A and group B belong to economic metrics. In other words, regardless of the company's home country, respondents prioritized purely economic metrics when determining the supply chain management quality. It should be emphasized that all environmental and social metrics without exception were classified by respondents as group C, i.e., as unimportant, insignificant, not playing a major role in determining the supply chain management, which confirms research hypothesis H1.
However, supply chains are only resilient if two inseparable criteria are met:
supply chains should improve the environment, and meet ethical standards to enhance social justice and economic viability; supply chains should have a major focus on the environment, with society ranked second and the economy – third (Zimon, Tyan and Sroufe, 2019).
According to the ABC analysis, the supply chains of the surveyed companies clearly do not meet any of the mandatory resilience requirements, suggesting that the supply chains of small- and medium-sized businesses surveyed are immature and vulnerable, regardless of the home country.
The approach proposed by Zimon, Tyan and Sroufe (2019) to designing the strategic supply chain management shows that small- and medium-sized businesses in the surveyed countries apply a predominantly reactive supply chain design, which implies taking a minimum set of actions to meet resilient rules and requirements to provide entities with the arrangements to manage their economic performance.
The reactive model is known as the base model of the supply chain management, and it is implemented most often with little external pressure, or with limited internal resources (Zimon, Tyan and Sroufe, 2019).
The primary goal of supply chain management policy in the reactive model is to avoid risk to meet regulatory requirements, allowing the individual benefits of the supply chain management to be exploited with a minimal set of practices involved.
To improve the supply chain management, the base model recommends for companies a set of critical management practices that improve not only economic performance but also certain components of environmental performance:
waste and water management, air pollution controls; energy conservation and pollution reduction; procurement of nonhazardous and nontoxic materials; product recovery; supplier resilience assessment (Zimon, Tyan and Sroufe, 2019).
The reactive model of supply chain management has the least resilience, and its impact on the society and the ecosystem is rather small. Therefore, to ensure the resilient development of entities, the reactive supply chain management model should be considered as a basic form of SSCM and the basis for the development of more resilient and efficient models.
The full integration of the proposed critical supply chain management practices demonstrates the need to move toward environmental performance and a more integrated approach to social issues to build a cooperative model where the supply chain management is not implemented as a response to external requirements but as an additional business opportunity.
The cooperative model strategy extends the best practices of the base model to additional aspects of implementation that have a significant impact on the environment, including:
developing a common mission, vision, and goals to achieve resilient supply chain management; resilient procurement that extends basic sustainable procurement to include environmental and social aspects of diversity, security, human rights, philanthropy, and local procurement; meeting the requirements of ISO 14001 to develop an effective environmental management system that contributes to the environmental and economic objectives of all supply chain entities; reverse logistics improvements focusing on deriving value from the resources used and re-introducing them into the value stream; implementing quality management standards on a large scale to improve key supply chain management processes; strong partnerships built on the sustainable development principles and providing additional opportunities for innovation; structural, technological, and other arrangements for production, including productivity and quality improvements, integration of processes, and reduction of the adverse impact on the environment (Zimon, Tyan and Sroufe, 2019).
In this case, building a cooperative model of supply chain management opens the way for simultaneous improvements in the companies’ economic performance and resilience in the supply chain, which is especially relevant in the current context.
The present paper develops a methodological approach to assess the supply chain management and to put together the main ways to improve it.
The COVID-19 pandemic was not only an unprecedented challenge, but also a powerful indicator that revealed the worst vulnerabilities in social and economic institutions, including the fragility and unsustainability of a number of traditional supply chain designs, which immediately raised public demand for methodologies ensuring resilient supply chain development.
In this context, the study of the main drivers of supply chain resilience using an integrated model proposed by Karmaker, et al. (2021) is of interest. Using methodologies based on Pareto analysis, structural modeling (TISM), and cross-impact matrix multiplication applied to classification (MICMAC) analysis, this study identifies 13 major drivers of supply chain resilience (Karmaker, et al., 2021).
While acknowledging the significance of the study, it should be emphasized that, unlike the results presented in this paper, this study lacked a multi-country aspect.
The drivers have been developed for the developing economy of Bangladesh and piloted using expert judgements provided by national supply chain professionals.
The results of a multi-country study (613 companies from Canada, Iran and Turkey) presented by Kot, Haque and Baloch (2020), who found statistically significant cross-country differences in the drivers of the supply chain management, had a significant influence on the development of hypotheses as well as on the study sample.
This suggested that the factors of the supply chain management should have statistically significant similarities for economies which used to be a part of a larger economy. This assumption was the main hypothesis of this paper, which was validated during the study.
A systematic approach in the study of the relationships of structural, parametric, and combinatorial supply chain optimization models, focusing on streamlining the supply chain structure in manufacturing companies, has attracted attention (Gorskiy, Khalikov and Maximov, 2020).
Unfortunately, the research focuses on streamlining the supply chain design based on maximizing economic effect, while a significant number of studies argue that the prevalence of economic factors in supply chains is only typical for basic supply chain designs. Focusing solely on economic benefits makes supply chains more fragile and more difficult to sustain, while meeting environmental and social goals helps to ensure resilience of supply chains, ultimately contributing to significant economic benefits (Karmaker, et al., 2021; Zimon, Tyan and Sroufe, 2019).
Multivariate study focusing on the economic evaluation of the supply chain management efficiency in agribusinesses should be mentioned as well (Ableeva, et al., 2019). Unfortunately, this paper is industry-specific, which makes it difficult to apply to improve the supply chain management for companies in other industries.
The use of interorganizational systems (IOS) to improve the supply chain management should be recognized as technologically innovative and promising (Asamoah, et al., 2021). Research findings made it clear that using IOS directly increases both management capabilities and supply chain performance, with the supply chain management capabilities playing the additional role of partially mediating the relationship between reliance on IOS and supply chain performance.
The identified impact of supply chain management capability on supply chain performance using IOS was found to be greater than the direct impact of IOS use on supply chain performance, suggesting the crucial importance of management quality for the supply chain development (Asamoah, et al., 2021; Zou, 2021). Yet, at the time of the study, this approach has no significant implementation prospects in the post-Soviet economies due to underdeveloped interorganizational systems.
The data-driven approach to assessing the performance of resilient supply chain management in a hierarchical structure under uncertainty is also innovative. Such approach is based on the exploratory factor analysis supplemented by synthetic methods, decision theory, and experimental evaluation techniques to identify drivers of supply chain management ensuring sustainable development (Tseng, et al., 2019).
While recognizing the prospects of using big data technology in the economy and supply chain management, it should be emphasized that, at the time of the study, most small- and medium-sized businesses in the post-Soviet economies are not ready for the implementation of big data technology, which makes it difficult to implement this approach.
The pressing problem of supply chain management of micro- and small businesses is addressed in the paper based on a multi-tier approach to sustainability and regional development (Silva, et al., 2021). Unfortunately, the study has a very narrow focus on supply chains for cashew grown in the state of Ceará, Brazil, which requires considerable adaptation for other uses.
Therefore, the proposed methodological approach allows assessing the supply chain management at small- and medium-sized businesses in the post-Soviet economies to improve the quality of management to ensure sustainable development under uncertainty.
The main advantages of the developed methodological approach are as follows:
measurability: providing for monitoring for the purpose of the systematic control over supply chain management; scalability: allowing the proposed method to be used both for a multi-country study and for assessing the quality of a particular supply chain; simplicity and clarity: facilitating implementation by small and medium-sized businesses; cost-effectiveness: the use of this methodological approach does not require extra outlay for special equipment or software, as all calculations are made in Microsoft Excel.
The paper provides a methodological approach to assessing (based on online questionnaires) the quality of companies’ supply chains, which was tested by small- and medium-sized businesses in Russia, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan.
The developed methodological approach to assessing the quality of supply chain management in a company is quantitative and hybrid, as it is implemented through a phased evaluation of key metrics on a 5-point Likert scale, followed by ranking the mean value of the resulting assessments and ABC analysis using the Pareto principle.
When piloting the developed methodological approach in small- and medium-sized businesses in Russia, Kazakhstan, and Azerbaijan (256 companies in total), comparable quantifications of the main supply chain management metrics were obtained, which were used to determine the main supply chain designs in the surveyed companies.
The results of implementation of the proposed approach suggest that small- and medium-sized businesses in Russia, Kazakhstan, and Azerbaijan use mostly reactive (base) design of supply chain. This validated the main research hypothesis regarding the significant similarity of supply chain designs in post-Soviet economies that used to be a part of the larger Soviet economy.
The reactive model is appropriate in case of under-funding. However, the reactive model does not meet the requirements for resilient supply chains.
Following the piloting, specific recommendations were developed for the gradual improvement of the supply chain design and the transition to a cooperative management model to ensure resilient supply chain development and provide supply chain entities with additional competitive advantages.
The proposed methodological approach is distinguished by its simplicity, adaptability to the principles of social distancing, scalability and measurability that allow using this assessment method for monitoring the quality of supply chains, as well as for monitoring the supply chain management at the regional, sectoral, national, and multi-country levels.
Furthermore, the practical relevance of the proposed approach is enhanced by the low system requirements for computing hardware and software. All calculations were made in Microsoft Excel, which is important for small- and medium-sized businesses of the post-Soviet economies.
The study limitations are the narrowness of the choice of primary data collection instruments due to quarantine restrictions, budgetary constraints, due to which the sample size of the study was not as wide as planned to cover in the long term. Thus, the prospect of further research consists in testing the hypothesis of the relationship between economic history and the supply chain quality management models on a broader array of data on small- and mediumsized enterprises in the Eastern European countries of the post-Socialist camp, as well as China.
The theoretical contribution of the proposed approach is to expand the hypothesis of the similarity of economic models of supply chain management in countries of the same historical formation on the example of post-Soviet economies.
The practical contribution consists in the development of directions of modernizing the reactive model and its transformation into a cooperative management model, taking into account the criteria of social and environmental sustainability.