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Over the past few years there has been confusion and disagreement among general business practitioners and operations professionals concerning the terms “logistics” and “supply chain management”. Various formal definitions have been offered for both terms. In addition, the common usage of each term in industry varies. Business terms are often defined over time, by the common use or application of the term. Examines the historical definitions of both terms, looks at current practitioner views of the terms, and proposes a hierarchy for the relationship between logistics and supply chain management.

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Purpose Drawing on complementarity theory, the purpose of this study is to posit that social media use enhances the effect of supplier involvement on new product development (NPD) performance, while two key firm capabilities further enhance the moderating effect of social media use: market and technological knowledge-processing capabilities. Design/methodology/approach To test the hypotheses, the authors used a longitudinal survey of 367 firms, from seven major manufacturing industries: information technology (22.1 per cent), automotive industry (19.6 per cent), chemicals (18.2 per cent), textiles (13.3 per cent), machinery (12.5 per cent), energy (10.1 per cent) and others (4.1 per cent). Findings The results support the expectation that social media use and two firm capabilities (market and technological knowledge-processing capabilities) enhance the effect of supplier involvement on NPD performance in terms of product innovativeness, market performance and financial performance. Interestingly, post-hoc analyses indicate that supplier involvement has an inverted U-shaped relationship with product innovativeness. In addition, social media use not only strengthens the positive effect of, but also alleviates the negative effect of, supplier involvement in product innovativeness. Research limitations/implications The findings of this study provide new evidence that supply chain members’ use of social media better enables them to enhance their innovation performance with supplier involvement. Practical implications This study provides practical direction to help manufacturing managers enhance innovation performance outcomes of supplier involvement. Originality/value This study makes an original contribution to the supply chain literature by empirically demonstrating the key enablers that increase the efficacy of supplier involvement.

SUMMARY Supply chain managers confront numerous threats and opportunities in today's competitive environment. Firms simultaneously face increased pressure to lower costs and to be innovative. In addition, most firms are also under increased pressure to improve their environmental (ecological) performance. These rival demands from the competitive environment make it difficult for supply chain managers to determine how a specific investment will influence performance. Thus, inevitable tradeoffs among investments must be assessed and implemented. This research examines the efficacy of investments in environmental management in different competitive environments, and provides guidelines for supply chain managers in determining when and how they should respond to simultaneous pressures to improve economic and ecological performance.