Promoting Competitive Advantage: The Role of IT Integration, Trust and Innovativeness

Due to the recent movements related to the focus of core competence and as a result of a tendency toward global profit squeezing, the innovativeness of the supply chain play a key role in influencing a firm’s competitive advantage. Enterprises keep good relationships with their suppliers and customers in the hope that the supply chain system can operate effectively. This means that firms have been encouraged to connect key suppliers and customers in order to establish strong supply chains and thus to enhance the competitive advantages related to their supply chain systems. Electronic OEMs in Taiwan currently are facing fierce challenges related to high elasticity, fast speed, and small amounts and various modes of production. Therefore, enterprises need to enhance quick response through effective IT integration and mechanisms intended connect supply chain members in order to increase innovativeness and competitive advantage. The model and hypothesized relationship are empirically tested using the structural equation modeling approach, supported by SmartPLS2.0 software. The results of this study showed that IT integration and trust of supply chain members all positively influence innovativeness, and further have positive effects on competitive advantage. Implications for researchers and practitioners, and suggestions for future research are also addressed in this study.