Supply Chain Management
The focus of this research was to find out the impact of supply chain management on financial performance of small and medium enterprises in Kenya. The study found out that out of the four supply chain management practices, supplier relationship management was the most embraced having a significance of 0.14. This is because supplier relationship management reduces risk as to stock outages and ensures efficiency and effectiveness use of the available supply chain systems to save costs, improve reliability, and create value to the end customer. The findings conform to the research study by Andriof & Waddock (2017) who showed a positive relationship between supply chain management and performance. They argue that SRM is not a single linear process but a wide philosophy that requires different functions to work together thus to mean that, supply chain management has a positive impact on the performance of an enterprise.
Findings further showed that the enterprise had adopted core competency to a larger extent as compared to collaboration but to a lesser extent compared to green supply chain management: adoption of core competency had significantly impacted positively on financial performance of the enterprise involved since it helped the firm organize and plan for demand requirements so that they may be fulfilled within the required time frame.
The study further concludes that the enterprise had adopted collaboration but to a lesser extent compared to green supply chain management and supplier relationship management: adoption of collaboration positively enhanced performance of the enterprise involved; through collaboration, the operational cost were reduced since both the vendor and buyer take part in order processing cost reduction by applying information technologies such as electronic data interchange.