SUPPLY CHAIN FLEXIBILITY AND BALANCED SCORECARD: CONCEPTUAL MODEL AND EMPIRICAL STUDY IN TUNISIAN COMPANIES LAUNCHED UPGRADING PROGRAM

In this article, we clarify the concept of supply chain flexibility (SCF) in an attempt to unveil the difficulty in understanding and dealing with the scope this concept. The imprecise notion of SCF makes it difficult to develop valid and reliable measures which are needed to construct and test a theory involving supply chain flexibility. This paper sheds light on literature relating to the impact of SCF on business performance. A conceptual framework is presented to uncover the effects of different dimensions of SCF (human resources, product, process, information technology and logistics) on the global performance. Valid and reliable measures are developed for each dimension of SCF and global performance and hypotheses are tested using structural equation modeling. From a large sample survey (n= 105) of manufacturing firms launched upgrading program, results indicate a partial impact of supply chain flexibility on the global performance. Three dimensions (human resources flexibility, Logistics flexibility and Information Technology flexibility) have positive and strong relationships on global performance. But, Product flexibility and Process flexibility were not present in Tunisian firms.