Does SOA Improve the Supply Chain? An Empirical Analysis of the Impact of SOA Adoption on Electronic Supply Chain Performance

Abstract

Service Oriented Architecture ("SOA") has been viewed as a strategic approach to IT that provides increased flexibility. However, there is scant research evidence of SOA adoption leading to tangible performance benefits across a cross section of firms. We fill this research gap by empirically analyzing the impact of SOA adoption on the performance of electronic supply chains for a cross section of large US firms. We find that adoption of SOA does lead to better performance of the electronic supply chain. We also find that SOA moderates firm's ability to leverage electronically integrated customers to achieve better electronic supply chain performance. Further, we show that the impact of SOA adoption is fully mediated through its moderation effect on the firm's ability to leverage electronically integrated customers to achieve higher electronic supply chain performance. Lastly, the paper discusses how IT managers can make informed SOA adoption decisions.

Go with the Flow - Design of Cloud Logistics Service Blueprints

“…For the selection of LSP, flexibility -in terms of ability of adaption to changing customer requirements, responsiveness to target market, handling of specific requirements and time response capability -is an important evaluation criteria [2], [3], [4]. Flexibility and performance of logistics services can be increased [5] by the adoption of a service oriented paradigm [6], [7], which is also the foundation for the principles of cloud computing (CC) ('...-as-a-Service') [8], [9]. This comprises on the one hand encapsulation, composability, loose coupling, and reusability (adapted from service orientation) and on the other hand virtualization of resources, ad-hoc reconfiguration and inter-connectability of resources (adapted from CC).…”

Anatomy of one service-oriented architecture implementation and reasons behind low service reuse

“…From a strategic management point of view, shared business data can be seen as an intangible resource [37]. There are several examples of how sharing data between enterprises can provide business value [38][39][40] and SOA adoption in general has been reported to improve data sharing [38,41,42] and quality [9,43].…”

“…Different viewpoints can be combined with triangulation [45], to provide a business viewpoint to the phenomena of service reuse in enterprises: (1) The purpose of almost all services in the case ESB was to share data; (2) almost all potentially reusable services were related to sharing data in another case study [44]; (3) SOA adoption in general has been reported to improve data sharing [38,41,42]; and (4) runtime service reuse is mandatory to enable data sharing between service consumers [38]. All these viewpoints support the argument that data reuse provides enterprises motivation to pursue service reuse of data services.…”

Framework for Real-Time Process Modeling of Supply Chains

“…The advantage of SOA lies in its ability to provide seamless integration across business units, customers and partners [15]. In [13], an empirical study on the benefits of the adoption of SOA was carried out on the performance of electronic supply chains of a wide cross section of US-based firms. The findings indicated empirical support for a positive relationship between SOA adoption and performance of electronic supply chains.…”

“…This proposed research draws on the resources from four different areas: SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) [13] [15] [18]; knowledge management [7] [9]; resource optimization [1] [2] [16] and Process Modeling [26] [27] [28]. The authors envisage a synergy between these four areas of knowledge that enables a framework that demonstrates automated SCM, optimization and human collaborative monitoring.…”